Inconceivable
by JoIsBishMyoga
Summary: In the face of a DNA analysis Kaito can't deny, he begins uncovering the rest of his family's secrets. Too bad he's not the only one looking.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Inconceivable

Author: joisbishmyoga

Word Count: Like I ever use a program with a counter.

Rating: G for content, R for multi-syllable words.

Disclaimer: Gosho owns, Jo whorships.

Warnings: MK canon has some bad science. Work with me here.

Characters/Pairings: Hakuba, Kaito, no pairing, because this is Not Deal.

Notes: Almost, but not entirely, unlike Deal. (Absolutely, positively, inspired-by-due-to-being, the exact opposite of a key point in said fic.)

Inconceivable

Hakuba Saguru sat on a low wall by the school's soccer field, picking at his lunch and pretending total exhausted obliviousness. Not that he wasn't truly tired, for he was, but oblivious... no. Saguru was merely exaggerating, and had been all morning, to snare a certain classmate's attention. And here came that classmate now, bouncing out of the school with his own lunch and just-so-happening to notice the empty spot next to Saguru.

Kuroba Kaito plopped down on the stone with just the scarcest polite 'mind if I sit here thanks'.

Ha. Experiment confirmed; Saguru had known the class clown and probable Kaitou Kid wouldn't be able to resist trying to cheer him up. Particularly knowing what had happened on Saturday...

"What's up?" Kaito asked. "Have a good weekend?"

"Not particularly," Saguru replied. "I take it you didn't hear about the shootout."

"Shootout?" Kaito echoed, well-faked disbelief in his voice. "No! Are you okay?"

Saguru flicked his chopsticks, waving that off. "Quite, quite. Perfectly healthy. I was going to process evidence all weekend, but one of my machines broke, so I've been running diagnostics and recalibrating it instead." Except that he was fairly sure the machine was working perfectly, after all the tests and the complete overhaul he'd done on it. "It's the strangest thing..." he mused. "Perhaps I should request your opinion. Your unorthodox genius may have more application than mine."

Kaito stared at him, a slow smirk creeping across his features. "You totally set this up," he accused.

"Me? Never," Saguru drawled, lying through his teeth. "It is truly a remarkable flaw."

"Setup," Kaito sang, eyes gleaming. "So, what's your machine's problem, oh great computer master?"

Saguru chose to ignore that, taking a bite of rice and giving every appearance of gathering his thoughts as he chewed. Finally, he swallowed, and lowered his chopsticks. "It's my -- or rather, my grandfather's -- primary DNA analyzer. It's giving provably incorrect results for a single individual injured in the shooting; one of the department consultants. I required samples from every officer, consultant, and bystander injured, as well as the victims, in order to rule them out."

"Standard procedure," Kaito agreed. "Go on."

"The machine consistently gives a readout that this individual is between sixteen and eighteen years old."

"And the actual person is... what, twenty-seven?"

"Six."

Kaito's chopsticks clattered against the side of his bowl. "_Six?"_

"It gets worse," Saguru added. Had it not been for this part, he would've actually believed that the machine was wrong, though he had yet to find an adequate explanation for why a teenager looked and claimed to be six. "The machine found an almost perfect genetic match between him and another sample -- the only difference is in the tip of the ninth chromosome. Blood type, mostly." Saguru shifted, carefully looking towards the sky, as he continued, "Were I certain my machine was working properly -- had I not met Edogawa Conan and seen for myself that he is not seventeen -- I would have diagnosed a genetic translocation in an AB-blood type zygote prior to splitting into identical twins. It would be a medical anomaly for the books."

"... huh. Freaky."

"Quite." And now for the real reason he'd lured Kaito into this conversation. It was a shame Hakuba couldn't soften the blow, since he had no proof of Kaito's nightlife. "The near-identical sample is Kaitou Kid."

Kaito fell off the wall.


	2. Chapter 2

This was only supposed to be a one-shot! wails

Pts. 2 - 5

The next day, while his mother was at work, Kaito ransacked the house looking for old photo albums.

His reasoning (he could do logic if he tried, really) went thus:

- The Kurobas had been married for a few years before Kaito was born.

- Toichi wouldn't cheat on his wife.

- Kaito was far too much like Toichi to be adopted.

- Therefore, Shin'ichi was a Kuroba, given up for unknown reasons.

- His parents wouldn't break ties with their son completely.

- There would be pictures.

- None of the pictures in the albums were creepy stalker-with-a-zoom-lens type, as he recalled.

- Therefore, they'd kept contact with Shin'ichi and the Kudos.

- Kaito certainly didn't remember ever playing with any little boys who looked just like him.

- Therefore, any pictures of Shin'ichi would have had to come from before, oh, age three.

- Age three was about the time the Kudos had moved to the States for a few years anyway.

- Asking his mom wouldn't do any good. If she'd wanted him to know, she'd have told him.

- Which was why none of Kaito's baby pictures showed Shin'ichi with him. His parents were thorough about keeping secrets. Exhibit A, Kaitou Kid.

- Tricking it out of her wouldn't work either. She knew all his moves. It was probably some weird Mom-thing, that the only way to get away with anything was to sneak around and make sure she never heard a word.

So. Picture albums. Specifically, the ones from Kaito's infancy and toddler years. Just because there weren't any pictures of Kaito _and _Shin'ichi, didn't mean there weren't any of Shin'ichi _alone_. Misdirection and hiding in plain sight were stunningly effective Kaitou Kid tricks. Kaito had never noticed a thing... until now. Page six. Kaito felt a sinking sensation as he stared at the old photograph. He hadn't really _wanted _to believe...

But the eighteen-month-old in the picture, dropping blocks over a baby gate, was wearing the same intent expression Edogawa Conan did when faced with a new corpse.

-0-0-0-

"If I were incriminating evidence," Kaito growled, storming through the house in a snit, "where would I be hiding?" He answered himself in Conan's voice. "_Why, in plain sight, of course! No, wait, I have a better idea. How about in the room with all the _other _incriminating evidence?" _Shoving on the painting of his father, he stomped into the secret room full of Kaitou Kid gear, and switched back to his own voice. "Gee, that's a funny idea, Niisan. Whatever made you think of it?" He glared at the packed room, the overflowing shelves, the dolls and wigs and costumes, the random half-staircase, the _car_--

Oh yes. That would be why. This was going to be a bitch to find anything in.

"So, if I were incriminating evidence," Kaito repeated, more softly, "where would I be hiding?"

Several hours later, his head felt like a dust rag, and he'd uncovered a shoebox under the only step that didn't squeak. He plopped onto the floor with the box in his lap, tugged off the tangled knot of twine holding it closed, and set the lid aside.

Two identical little faces stared up at him from a photograph. The little boy on the left had his twin trapped in a hug-of-death from behind, smugly grinning face hooked over his messy-haired brother's shoulder. Baby-Kaito looked utterly stunned.

"Looks like Tantei-kun finally caught you," Kaito whispered to himself. _And so have I. Busted, Dad. So busted._

He started pulling the pictures, one by one, out of the box. Konked out across each other on a sofa. Shrieking with laughter and smearing each other in a mud puddle. Dancing (or something) in front of a TV blaring Hello Kitty. Mutilating a birthday cake with spoons. Bathtime, because of course doting parents had to have naked baby pictures. Escaping bathtime. Sharing a juice.

The pictures got younger and younger (or, rather, he and his brother did; the actual photographs got older) as Kaito progressed through the box. Learning to walk; they were holding themselves up using the kotatsu. Crawling in what looked like a race. Buried to their elbows in another birthday cake, chocolate and blue frosting covering their faces and streaking every available surface within a meter of their high chairs. Sitting up on a blanket, their hair baby-fine and too short to make any difference between them. Lying down, curled against each other and alertly watching Yukiko's hand flutter above them. Sleeping in a bassinet. Lots of lying down and sleeping together pictures.

Then a picture of a too-small infant in an incubator, dwarfed by a breathing tube.

Kaito stared at the premature baby in utter shock. _He _hadn't been born early... but Shin'ichi... when was his birthday? Had they had to take him out early? Why?

Only a few pictures remained in the box. The premature baby, shrinking with each snapshot. A closeup of his tiny hand clutched around a woman's manicured littlest finger. Kudo Yukiko in a hospital rocking chair, the boy almost lost in wrapped blankets and a miyamairi kimono; Shin'ichi must've been in the hospital for over a month, a Shinto priest called in to give the four-week-old his first blessing.

Three pictures remained under that. None were of Shin'ichi, or babies at all. Five people crowded together in the top one: the Kudos, the Kurobas... and a heavily pregnant girl, maybe seventeen at best, _who looked exactly like both Toichi and Yuusaku_.

"Shit," Kaito hissed, all his ideas rearranging themselves in a heartbeat. He and Shin'ichi didn't look like their father at all. They looked like their _mother._ Who was obviously _related _to Toichi and Yuusaku. He'd already been thinking their looks and genius had been passed down... why not a few more generations further back than he'd thought? Then he and Shin'ichi, and Toichi and Yuusaku and the girl, would take after some common ancestor.

Two more pictures, both of a baby shower, then the last items in the box were two newspaper articles, with tiny back-page headlines.

_Young Woman Found Dead in Ekoda_, the accompanying snapshot a slightly older, thinner version of the pregnant girl. And an obituary for one Kumori Hibari, age nineteen, no surviving relatives.

No _known_ surviving relatives, that is, Kaito thought grimly.

-0-0-0

Kaito spent the next few weeks even busier than usual. It kicked off with a quick break-in to the Mouri apartment, where Kaito left a photocopy of the article about their mother's murder on Conan's pillow, neatly labeled "To Edogawa, please help". (No way was he telling the boy... his _brother_... the truth. Not when their lives and sanity were already so delicately balanced; not with the Black Org hiding in the wings.)

Then midterms required a bit of extra attention and care to keep his classmates' spirits up without triggering their frazzled nerves. The full moon came right after that, adding all the research and preparations for a heist into his day, under Hakuba's overly-watchful eye. (The detective's heightened scrutiny was always a pain in the butt, so Kaito made the riddle extra-obscure. Hakuba had earned it anyway, springing this on him now.)

Afterwards, a quick check of his mother's address book yielded his grandparents' names, neatly struck out with a ballpoint pen, the lines thin enough that he could still identify the name of the Tokyo ward they'd lived in. The weekend following the heist found him buried knee-deep in the half-organized archive of that local paper, looking up obituaries... and from those, he found the small town they'd been born in.

So it was that three weeks after Hakuba's revelation, Kaito stepped off the train in Oarai, a small coastal town an hour north of Tokyo. His grandparents had moved from here during the economic boom of post-occupation Japan, migrating to the cities as so many of their generation had. Their birth certificates would be archived here, from which Kaito could begin researching parents, siblings, marriages, even tax records if necessary. There had to be a connection to Kumori Hibari _somewhere_.

There were maps of the bus routes at the station, with local sites of interest marked. The town office was probably the right place, or at least would have someone who could tell him where to go, so Kaito hopped on the Aqua Land bus.

He promptly flinched. The bus ads were for a local aquarium, and painted with bright, colorful... _fish_. And he had to stay on here til the twelfth stop? Gah. This was just cruel, and somehow entirely Hakuba's fault.

Kaito resolutely turned his attention away from the ads as the bus lurched into gear, casting about for a distraction. Just out of arms' reach, a baby, perhaps eight months old, was staring at him over its mother's shoulder. Its mouth gaped slightly open, eyes wide and dark with the peculiar focus of that age. Kaito grinned at the baby, making a quick face. Its nose wrinkled in response. Bingo.

As the bus rumbled over the hills ringing the town, Kaito continued his attempts to secretly entertain the child. At the fifth stop, a group of upper-management salarymen got on and blocked Kaito's view, golf clubs bristling between him and the child. A few minutes later, at the seventh, a cluster of kindergarteners crowded aboard, little bags printed with the same damn fish in their hands.

This place was _evil_.

Ten minutes later, Kaito and the children got off near the town center. "Town center" was nothing like Kaito was used to. The streets were nowhere near packed. No doubt they'd be somewhat moreso near the beaches Oarai drew tourists in with, but up here... no. Most of the people out and about here were from a previous generation, middle-aged housewives and retirees running daily errands, though several women were younger, pushing strollers. One such woman was dancing near a bench, baby cradled on her shoulder, heedless of the stares she was getting from passersby.

He turned his attention to said passersby. The woman's behavior would be entirely too conspicuous to imitate, not that Kaito would have a baby around anyway, but the people reacting... there was fodder in that. An old woman in kimono, dyed hair pulled back almost hard enough to smooth out her perm, resolutely ignored the dancing mother. That was an interesting mindset, her unmistakable discomfort with Westernized behaviors mixing with the conformity of fashion and hairstyle. He'd bet she had a job sitting in the museum for atmosphere.

Hey, there was a good idea for scoping out his next museum heist.

Kaito bounced up the steps of the town hall, undeniably cheered by the thought of the look on Hakuba's face if Kid-as-elderly-lady cooed over what a well-mannered (HA) young man he was. Too bad this wasn't England; he'd heard their old ladies could get away with pinching people's cheeks. For reasons other than checking for disguises, that is.

Speaking of old ladies, the archives he needed to get into were being guarded by a tiny, withered example of the species. A cloud of thin white hair stood fluffed out from her head, nearly hiding a bald spot on top (she'd been an elegant young girl, then, prone to the old-fashioned geisha hairstyles), and violet eyes twinkled out from a mass of wrinkles.

Kaito turned on the charm.

Five minutes later, he'd been firmly ensconced at a rickety table wedged into the back of a room filled with file cabinets, six rows deep and stacked to the ceiling. A cup of mediocre tea sat cooling at his elbow, and the old woman was bowing out with assurances that she'd have one of the office girls pick up a few more onigiri with lunch.

Then she was gone, and Kaito got a chance to actually look at the archives.

Some sensible person had the cabinets marked with neatly typewritten hiragana, not kanji. Kaito pulled open a random drawer and peeked inside, shuffling a few files back to make sure... "Yes!" he whispered to himself. Each tab had the name written -- mostly by hand -- in kanji, but also had kana, and that's what they were organized by.

Kaito shut the drawer and headed down the aisles. The door to the room was at the 'end' of the kana order; _Ku_, for his family, would be near the back wall. Not _against_ the wall -- the final cabinet, squeezed into a corner, was _Ki _-- but the first cabinet in the second row. Kaito counted past the tabs under his breath.

_Do _came first. Kudou files took up a small section, not much more than a dozen strong. Kaito sighed (why was he _not _surprised they'd come from here?) and set them aside in a small stack.

_Mo _followed, several kana later. Kumori also had a section, just six files, which Kaito added to the Kudou pile.

_Ro_..._ Ba_. Kuroba. This section looked far healthier, some twenty-odd folders for Kaito to take, with the Kudou and Kumori ones, back to the desk. He had the main pieces of the puzzle, so now... first the easy part.

Kaito pulled the birth certificates from the Kuroba files, found his grandfather's, and laid them out on the desk in a makeshift family tree. Son to father, father to siblings, the papers growing more yellowed with each generation Kaito built.

The grid Kaito finished with made his poker face falter, just for a moment. Four generations of Kurobas had been born in this town, from his grandfather in the late 1940's to the first baby born after the Meiji Reformation's law requiring commoners take surnames. Only Kaito's grandfather and a distant female cousin had been in the postwar generation; the previous generation had been mostly boys, and decimated by World War 2.

Kudou and Kumori next, spread (the archivist would kill him) on the well-swept floor in similar grids. The Kudou grid showed similar losses in the war generation; the Kumori one was too small for comparison, only one or two children per generation

Marriage certificates next. For every missing mother in the sequence, and every daughter who'd married out... hooray for filing in triplicate.

Two hours later, Kaito hadn't found any crosses between his three family trees. It didn't make sense; if the connection was illegitimate, their fathers and Kumori Hibari wouldn't have _known_. He was missing something here, something that would probably be horribly obvious in hindsight.

"What _am _I missing, Tantei-nii?" he murmured, grinning at the papers as if they were all that stood between him and Conan at yet another well-sprung trap. Not much of a defense, they'd be. Four generations.

... Four. Shi. Four was death. Four wasn't a defense.

... four _wasn't enough_.

Dammit, where did they keep the historical scrolls? If the families had intermarried in the Meiji Reformation, it might be on the scrolls for the new Kuroba, Kudou, and Kumori clans.

Kaito paused.

"Kudou. Kuroba. Kumori," he murmured, slowly sounding out the syllables. "Ku...o..."

Ku, blank-o, blank. A pattern. One that would've had to be agreed upon by the heads of each clan...

... in lineages that, if the last four members were any clue, were prone to a rather similarly twisted way of thinking.

If the three wives, the however-many-greats grandmothers, at the Meiji end of the family trees _weren't _Kudou, Kuroba, and Kumori by birth, Kaito would eat his top hat. _Without _taking out the gadgets and tricks.

Kaito scooped up the papers, shuffled them back into their files, returned the files to the cabinet, and headed back out in search of a phone book. He gave a quick, polite wave to the archivist...

...and froze. He was a total _dunce_. The _violet-eyed_ archivist. The curly-haired kimono lady, the dancing mother, probably even that overly alert baby... in his ancestral hometown. It was like he'd been thrown into a food processor and his traits spread thinly out over the populace. (And wasn't that a horrifying mental image.) He should've clued in right from the start.

Kaito spun on his heel, beaming at the archivist. Old women were notorious for gossip, sometimes even decades older than themselves. "Hey, ma'am? You know a lot about Oarai's old families...?"

He'd check the scrolls later. Right now, it was time to chat with his nth-cousin umpteen times removed.

-0-0-0

Conan didn't notice the teenager until he plopped down onto the neighboring stool. A quick glance around the washroom showed the place hadn't filled up while Conan was shampooing his hair, so he edged a little bit away. He'd just _had _to attract a pervert the first time he'd talked Ran out of dragging him into the women's side, didn't he. And his weapons were all in the pile with the rest of his clothes, out in the changing room.

The teen seemed to not be looking yet, though Conan could feel the weight of the older boy's attention on him. Warily, he hurried to rinse off properly while the guy was bending forward to soak his hair.

"You solve my puzzle yet?" the boy asked. Conan froze, the back of his neck prickling. "Oh, sorry. I don't think we've met." The boy peeked up from behind a hand, violet eyes flashing as he shoved sopping wet bangs out of his face.

Holy _shit_.

"Kudou Shin'ichi." A quick grin. "Detective."

"You..." Conan's eyes dropped to the imposter's unmistakably male chest. How the _hell_ was this Vermouth? Who else could it be if it wasn't Vermouth? ... _please god don't be my mother_... "You..."

"Dropped off that cold case in your room about three weeks ago? Yup."

Cold case. In his room. Three weeks. The article about the dead college girl. "THAT WAS YOU?!"

'Shin'ichi' glanced pointedly at the few other customers, giving a quick, apologetic nod of the head to them. "Manners, Tantei-kun," he murmured. "This is a _public _bathhouse. I was just wondering if you'd solved my puzzle for me yet."

No way, his mom couldn't impersonate a boy unless she was dressed. He hoped. "Gee, _niisan_, I dunno," Conan drawled sarcastically, mind frantically picking out what little he had picked up from the case. All signs had pointed to Black Ops... Vermouth couldn't impersonate a boy either. That didn't mean she didn't have one working for her. "You're a _great detective_, after all. You shouldn't need my help solving it." _Choke on the sarcasm_.

The imposter smiled. "I'm a little incognito at the moment. You may have noticed." _Ha ha. Very funny_, Conan thought, before the imposter sobered. Conan flinched away from the skillfully fractured look in those contact-colored eyes. "I'd really appreciate it if you had any ideas. It's a matter of... personal importance."

Anything of personal importance to Black Org... oh, all right, mysterious strangers who had the gall to steal Conan's identity and give him that _look_...

A sigh. "She was my mother, Tantei-kun."

Conan's train of thought came to a screeching halt. Tantei-kun. Gall. Disguise. God_dammit_, Kaitou Kid. "The article said no surviving relatives," Conan grumbled.

"No known surviving relatives," Kid replied simply. "I was adopted."

Dammit. His _mother_. Murdered at nineteen, so he couldn't have been much more than five... Conan sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Are you going to break into my room again?"

"I can."

He couldn't be more than twenty now at best: old enough to open his own adoption records and look up birth parents, old enough to begin worrying about his family's medical history... though Kid's behavior indicated emotional reasons too. To find out she'd been murdered and the case unsolved... Dammit, dammit, _dammit_. "I'll put the report in with the rest of my homework," Conan said.

God, he was such a sucker.

-0-0-0

Koln was probably the only recurring customer to order the coffee in this badly-lit hole-in-the-wall, but he was probably the only one who didn't care about the taste. Strong, black, thick like mirin and bitter as burnt teriyaki (Chianti's cooking skills were only marginally better than Koln's own)... it was about the only thing to keep an aging man going fast enough to keep up with the rest of the slime in the Org.

He had no interest in caffeine pills or drugs. He wasn't foolish enough to risk an addiction.

The waitress was smart enough to leave a bowl of crackers and a glass of water with the coffee, and even moreso to vanish when Koln flicked open the locks of his briefcase. ("His" being a relative term. This one had passed in and out of his possession via a complex series of handoffs since lunch; subordinates delivering reports and ammunition, switching out cards, and accepting pay.)

The top file was short, a notice that somebody had reopened the Kumori case. Koln got one of these about every year, but usually in January, when the police attempted to clean house. The screencap from the surveillance footage was no cop, though: it was a little boy. 'Edogawa Conan'... wasn't that the hotshot detective prodigy learning from Sleeping Kogoro?

No matter. The boy couldn't possibly break a case fifteen years cold and buried by the Org.

Koln checked the rest of the Kumori file anyway, just in case, though he was all too familiar with the details. Nothing traceable remained, so he set it aside.

The other two files were from Koln's sporadic, ongoing surveillance of one Kuroba Kaito. The minions thought... well, it didn't matter what they thought. If they believed Snake, they were just as stupid as the assassin himself. Or they didn't watch enough TV. It was a basic formula: if you shot a guy with a kid, and eight years later when the kid had grown up, the guy 'magically' reappeared... the kid was the one to watch.

So Koln had people deliver Kaitou Kid's file whenever they updated him on the Kuroba boy. It saved time and let him cross-reference at will.

Oarai. Pictures of the boy making silly faces on a bus, turning away from a fish-seller, ducking his head out of range of a traffic camera, entering the town hall. A list of the places he'd visited: the town hall's archives, a MosBurger, the library's archives; a list of the files he'd looked up: Kudou, Kuroba... Kumori.

Koln paused, then flipped back to the boy's latest school picture.

Opened the other file and pulled out the investigation's primary photograph of Kumori Hibari.

Double-checked the boy's birthdate.

A slow grin stretched unnaturally at Koln's mouth, sending the waitress skittering back into the kitchen, and he delved back into the boy's files with considerably more interest.

School transcripts. Teacher's comments. A child psychologist's diagnosis, from after Kuroba Toichi's death. Candid photographs, far fewer useable ones than in normal surveillance files. Koln paused at a good shot, a rare serious expression, focused on a nearby girl.

The boy had skill and genius in spades, even if some of the pictures indicated he may have inherited Calvados' weakness for a pretty girl. And he was completely untrained... he could have been so great, if only that bitch had _talked_!

Koln loosened his grip on the files, took a calming breath, and swallowed the dregs of his now-cold coffee. The past was the past, and Kumori had failed to keep his grandchildren hidden forever. The boy had looked up _three_ family names in Oarai. It wasn't too much to suppose that the third was the name of his brother's adoptive family. And if he'd gone to Oarai so suddenly... perhaps he'd discovered his brother recently.

If he had, it wasn't in the surveillance pictures from the Kuroba file. So maybe... he'd met the other boy as Kaitou Kid. Perhaps even impersonated him, which would be a lucky break some fifteen years overdue. The Kid file included pictures of every person he'd been known to impersonate.

Five minutes later, Koln had his answer. Kudou Shin'ichi, Great Teen Detective of the East... killed by Black Org.

So. One was dead, and the other an enemy.

The latter, at least, could be fixed.


	3. Chapter 3

Warnings, disclaimers, I love villains with brains, don't you?

Pts. 6-11

Conan's report had been wry, short, and to the point: the lack of evidence, the speed with which the case had been filed cold, even the small size of both headline font and full article about Kumori Hibari... everything pointed to Black Org behind Hibari's death. And, really, it made sense-- not too many things would drive Kaito's parents, or the Kudous, to hiding children from each other. But a murder by a powerful criminal syndicate was very near, if not at, the top of the list.

Kaito hadn't really thought much past finding out why his brother and adoption had been hidden. Still wasn't sure what to do with the information, now that he did know. Though getting Black Org busted and eradicated, as he'd been doing already, was a good start. He didn't really have any strategies other than his original one (draw them out with big, noisy heists), and possibly luring Conan (Shin'ichi? No, he couldn't risk saying the wrong name at the wrong time) in to help...

So without any strategies, and with a few days to breathe before he had to set up another heist, Kaito kicked back in a trick armchair in Kid's lair, put up the picture he'd framed of baby-Shin'ichi hugging baby-Kaito, clicked on the radio, and began rereading Conan's report.

Aloud. In Conan's voice. With his best guess at the snarky commentary Conan wouldn't have bothered to write down, though the boy had circled a phrase or two in red pen, with accompanying "ha! birthday!" and similar notes in the margins.

The music paused for a commercial and news break. Kaito mostly ignored the catchy, annoying jingles and the newscaster's voice, until his own name caught his attention.

"_-- a Kaitou Kid heist note early this morning. Preliminary decipherings indicate the Kid's next target is the Tsuda family, of Suzuki Industries. Stay tuned for developments in the case."_

Kaito's eyes narrowed at the radio. _He _certainly hadn't sent any note... and Suzuki Industries meant Sonoko would drive her parents nuts to be there for the heist. Which meant Ran would be there, with Conan.

Considering his brother's track record...

Which Investigation Unit One officer hadn't he impersonated for a while...?

-0-0-0

_"Between port and rice field, the youth unload a treasure ship. Fortune smiles upon the goods, one by one til the last is left behind." _Conan looked like he'd bitten into a lemon. "This is perhaps the worst Kid note I've ever seen."

Kid looked down from watching Megure and Nakamori hammer out jurisdiction rights while Hakuba (there was no other word for it) sulked. "Is it?" he asked curiously. He leaned forward to peer at the paper, pretending not to notice how the move made his blouse gape slightly over 'Detective Satou's' cleavage, or how Tsuda-san's eldest son angled himself to get a better look from afar. "It's obscure enough... isn't it?"

Conan made a scoffing sound in the back of his throat. "No," he replied sharply. "I mean, look at this. You don't unload ships between a port and anywhere, you unload them at the port. Since they're both very specific kanji, you can only get Shinden or Tsuda out of them. Treasure ships are Chinese, but they're only treasure ships until they're unloaded here in Japan. So, the reading is Tsuda. Much too easy, see?" Kid nodded, stifling a smirk when Conan continued, "The rest is just stupid. Unload _what_ from a treasure ship? The gold? The silver? Crystals? _Hats?_ An object with pictures of the ship, or the shippou pattern symbolizing them?

"As for 'fortune smiles' and 'the last left behind', that at least gives us a number: seven treasures, six-day cycle of luck, but does it mean the sixth day after the police recieved the note? The coming most-fortunate day? The coming least-fortunate day? There's no clues to the real time or target... tonight's just the first likely possibility."

"So," Kid-as-Satou murmured, eyes narrowed at the innocuous photocopy, "You think it's a forgery."

"I _know_ it's a forgery," Conan replied absently. Then he blinked, cast a wary glance at Satou, and beamed childishly. "Unless Kid hit his head on something!" he chirped. Kid blinked. Right. He'd been sounding too old for Detective Satou's ears. "He certainly wasn't drunk," Conan continued too cheerfully, kicking his legs under his chair. "The note would be a lot longer and more difficult to understand."

Hakuba stepped past Kid and leaned against the wall on Conan's other side. "I _wish_ he'd been drunk," he grumbled, with a dismayed glance down at Conan's too-innocent face.

Kid made a sympathetic sound. "Do forgeries make you nervous too?"

Matching incredulous looks. "Considering his track record with them?" Hakuba asked, gaze dropping pointedly to Conan again. "The most favorable outcome is the mere destruction of this building." Kid's eyes flicked to the ceiling overhead, deliberately unnerved. "The least favorable..."

"That's what we're here for, Hakuba-san!" Conan chirped.

Hakuba managed not to wince. "Speaking of which, how did you manage to be present without Sleeping Kogoro?"

As Conan answered, pointing at Ran and Sonoko and babbling excitedly, Kid let his eyes track over the crowd. Ran, Sonoko, Task Force, Investigation Unit One; Tsuda-san, a man in his fifties whose suit was due to be changed for the next size up; his square-faced wife; three sons ranging from mid-twenties to just fourteen; a daughter who was... ow, yup, had just slapped the unfortunate Task Force officer who'd checked her for a mask (read: pinched her face bruisingly hard); housekeeper, bookkeeper, gardener...

What was the gardener doing here at 8:30 at night?

Slowly, the crowd shifted, Nakamori and Megure's argument growing quieter. Conan slipped off his chair, slipping into a subtly ready stance. Kid followed his lead, but his attention was only half on the obvious target. Something was wrong. Something... where...?

"GET HIM!" Nakamori and Megure bellowed.

The Force pounced on the gardener, just as shots rang out.

Mrs. Tsuda collapsed. Ran and Sonoko began screaming as the Tsuda's daughter fell, a small round hole trickling blood from her forehead.

Kid caught a flicker of movement behind the loft railing overhead. "Upstairs!" Satou yelled, bolting in pursuit. Most of Investigation Unit One followed, Hakuba and Conan hard on Kid's heels.

Too many stairways in this house. Main stairs, side stairs, back stairs, three wings... the unit split up, four to a hall with Hakuba and Conan vanishing somewhere in the mess. Satou "accidentally" lost Shiratori and Takagi pretty quickly.

The flicker of movement had been black. The forgery had been too obvious, meant to have the violent crime unit on the spot... and the girl had been killed in full view of everyone, without any real attempt to fake an accident.

Everybody knew Kid didn't kill.

Somebody wanted Kid there.

Somebody wanted the police distracted while Kid was there.

And that somebody wore black.

Kid picked the lock on the garage and hurried inside. Forget the glider, forget changing out of the Satou disguise, he was _out_ of here. Regular murders, Black Org trying to kill him at a heist, that he could handle. Not people getting killed to draw him out.

Ooh, full tank on the Mercedes. Kid popped the lock and hotwired the car in about two seconds, and floored it out of the garage. Thank all the gods Detective Satou drove like a madwoman when she was chasing a suspect. He threw the wheel into a turn, tires screeching on the road.

The back windshield shattered.

Trap!

Kid let Satou's mask fall into his trademark maniacal grin. If they were chasing him out _here_, they weren't shooting at his brother in _there._ He'd just find a nice high bridge, drive off it, and escape on his glider from there.

A small head popped up in his rearview mirror. "Move your arm!"

"Holy _shit!_" Kid yelped. He grabbed his brother by the front of his shirt, dragged him into the front seat, and clicked the seatbelt in place before he took another sharp turn. "What do you think you're doing? You could get killed!"

"I'd noticed!" Conan twisted to pull something out of the back of his seat: a syringe topped with a red tuft. A second dart lodged itself into the radio console, a few threads catching on the hinge of Conan's glasses.

"Get your head down!" Kid suited action to words, ducking as he pushed Conan as deeply into the seat as possible. "These things are meant for large animals, not you!"

"Not you either," Conan replied sharply. He opened the glove compartment, rummaging through it as Kid wove through traffic, and came up with a large, metal flashlight. "Perfect," he said, leaning down to press at the sides of his shoes. "Get us out of traffic if you can."

No traffic, plus big conspicuous black van with the fedora brigade hanging out of it, guns blazing, plus Conan's superpowered kick and a hefty blunt object... Kid felt his madman's smirk gentle into something more genuine. "Have I ever mentioned you're my favorite detective, Tantei-kun?"

Conan glowered at him. "Stuff it, Kid."

Kid took an entrance ramp onto the freeway and headed out of town. "Dare I ask?" _How you spotted me?_

"Your feet are a size larger than Detective Satou's."

"Hm, yes, you'd have a better vantage than Hakuba-kun there." Ooh, if looks could kill.

Warehouse district. Not a large one, but one of the tiny "storehouses and small office blocks" that sprung up in the shadows of factories, where people didn't want to live. Kid took the next exit and circled into the maze of little streets and parking lots, weaving between buildings as fast as he dared.

When Conan unbuckled his belt and shoved the back of his seat down, laying low over it, Kid spared a hand to help hold his brother semi-safely in place, easing just a hair off the gas.

Three... two... one... Kid skidded into a straight stretch of road. The van's tires squealed as it raced around the corner, and Conan jumped up to dropkick the flashlight out the missing back window like a rocket.

Tires screeched, men's yells abruptly cut off by the crunch of a couple thousand kilograms of twisting metal.

Kid floored the gas. Somebody really needed to spring for one of these for Satou, her standard-issue pursuit vehicle wasn't nearly so smooth and light... though her driving likely made up for that.

Several kilometers passed before Conan settled his seat warily back into place and rebuckled the belt. A sudden intent look, and Conan's hand slapped at his wrist.

Kid held up the watch he'd palmed when holding Conan in place. "Sorry!" he said cheerfully, darting Conan even as the boy lunged for his seatbelt. "You'll just have to catch me another time..." Conan's eyes fluttered, and he slumped in his seat. "... Niisan."

Kid ruffled Conan's hair, then flipped on the radio. Now, off to the Mouri's, and then he could change out of Satou and vanish once more.

-0-0-0

The test shot had been a miserable failure from the perspective of actual capture and preservation of resources.

From Koln's perspective, though, the falsified heist had worked better than he could have hoped. The video from inside the van, in particular, showed excellent results. The Kuroba boy's ability to calculate and cut his losses, his evasive manuevers... granted, it had been against a small team of bottom-level minions. But that wasn't the detail catching Koln's attention.

On the video, a second, far smaller form had been in the car. Edogawa Conan, anticipating the Kid, matching his every move, coordinating with him so easily against a common enemy...

Dilemma solved.

The Mastermind project, long shelved, had been intended to train the next generation of Black Org. So far, it had failed with every subject. The only one who hadn't turned out an idiot, dead, or both was Sherry. The less said about her, the better. They'd been much too lenient, letting her sister run free.

Had Kudou been alive, Koln could have recreated the Sherry situation without it turning to disaster. Without him, though, Koln had been planning to break Kuroba, at risk of ruining him. Seventeen was just too old to train without leverage.

Six, however, was not.

Koln hit rewind on the motel's battered VCR, then took out his cell phone as the machine whirred softly. One ring. Two.

_Click._

"Remove the surveillance from Kuroba. Put them on Edogawa Conan."

-0-0-0

_Click_.

Vermouth had known learning the voice of the head of Koln's lackeys would come in handy. Twisting in her chair, she opened a window into the phone company's operating computer, routing the number back to the lackey's phone and dialing it.

One ring. Two.

_Click._

Switching to Koln's voice, Vermouth repeated his exact words as she pulled up another window. This one went directly into the Org's archives, where she had to type her password every minute to keep it from dumping a virus into her hard drive. But she at least had the password, one of two that wouldn't let anyone track her file history.

Kuroba. Kuroba Toichi, magician, dead. Not that one. Kuroba Kaito, high school student, alive.

She pulled up his school ID, and the corner of her mouth twitched upwards. It looked like she had more silver bullets in the clip than she thought.

-0-0-0

Kaito yawned as he wrote the date out on the blackboard. Morning duty. Yuck. There never seemed to be enough caffeine in the world to face it.

Staying up late working on his next heist (and debating whether or not to do it, for a change) might be part of the problem, there. But that was too much thinking for right now. Coffeeeeeeeee...

A takeaway cup appeared under Kaito's nose, the scent of a decent mocha curling up in thin wisps of steam. Ooh, he hadn't known he knew that magic trick...

"Good morning, Hakuba-kun!" Aoko caroled. "How are you?"

... oh. Not his fault, then. Kaito grabbed the cup before Hakuba could steal it back, taking a cautious drink, and discovered it was fresh-brewed and just under scalding hot. Okay, Hakuba was his best friend right now. _Aoko_ didn't bring him _mocha_.

"Tsuda's wife commited suicide in her jail cell last night," Hakuba said darkly, eliciting a sympathetic sound from Aoko. Kaito felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle up. Standard Black Org procedure. "Considering the police had yet to obtain definitive information regarding her stepdaughter's killer..."

Kaito lowered his coffee, staring at the plastic lid suspiciously. "Case closed?"

"Much as it pains me to admit it, yes."

That explained the mocha. Hakuba didn't like being the bearer of bad news. A killer on the loose, one who would target people to draw out Kid, that was about as bad as Hakuba could get.

Hakuba turned away to put his satchel on his desk. "Nakamori-chan," he said, voice carrying in the quiet room, "I think it would be prudent if you suspended your protesting at Kid heists for the foreseeable future."

The coffee in Kaito's stomach turned to ice. He'd been wrong; Hakuba's news could get worse. _Aoko_.

"Don't be silly, Hakuba-kun. Nobody's going to buy a hit on _me_."

A new voice rang out from the doorway. "I should say not. Good _gracious_, what children speak of these days!"

All three heads snapped up to spot an elderly woman in the doorway. She was short, her spine curved forward in a granny hump and her bra not doing its job anymore. Her hair was the silvery gray that came only with one's nineties or a bottle; a very intelligent choice, Kaito thought, since she was too wrinkled and jowly to pull off browns and blacks anymore. Despite the curvature of her spine, she carried no cane, and her only hint at infirmity was a pair of ugly orthopedic shoes.

She stumped slowly into the classroom, sharp eyes landing on Kaito at the chalkboard. "Kamezawa, if you would. Marsh for sawa." Kaito blinked, realizing she meant him to write her name on the board. As he did so, adding kana next to the kanji to help a few of the students at the bottom of the class, she continued, "I'll be taking over your class while your teacher recovers from a broken hip."

This was... disturbingly convenient. Too much so. Black Org didn't know about him... did they? They knew about Kid, and they thought Kid was Toichi. But something was definitely fishy-- _worrying _about this. There weren't that many retired teachers on the roster for substitutes... most of them were young, fresh out of college and stuck as subs until they got some experience under their belts.

If Black Org was watching him, they might be thinking they could use him to get to Toichi. Or his mother... He was definitely checking for bugs and suspicious people around Mom, as soon as he got home and before he hacked into the school database for their substitute list.

Not that there was likely to be anything off in the database, if their hackers were any good. Kaito's best hope would be a discrepancy between the information in the database and the actual phone book in his house.

Still, it would probably be best to operate as if Kamezawa-sensei was Black Org. Which, dammit, meant no checking up on Conan, none of his more complex tricks, and definitely no heist this month.

He was getting predictable anyway.

-0-0-0

Nobody would fault an old woman for pulling the only cushioned staffroom chair over to a sunny spot by the window, nor for commandeering the teapot. Several of the older female teachers -- the ones who'd come back to work after their children started lower secondary school -- smiled indulgently, with traces of future self-centeredness underlying their consideration.

Therefore, Vermouth was able to get an excellent view of Kuroba-kun and his friends eating their lunches, looking as carefree as high-school students normally did. To her eyes, pretty much everybody outside the Org looked carefree, except the police and the little detectives on a case. Most people never had life-and-death constantly, or even regularly, on the line.

Except this little group had somehow managed to score a grassy spot under a healthy, lush tree that blocked most overhead lines-of-sight. And Kuroba just happened to have his back to the wall, while Hakuba had his to the trunk of the tree. Vermouth could count half a dozen escape routes from Kuroba's spot alone. (Nakamori, at least, seemed oblivious to the fact that she was in the most protected spot between them.)

Good. With Kuroba wary, he should stay far away from Conan while her silver bullet was under increased survelliance... and keep his own behavior in check for some time. Perhaps not long enough that Koln would write the two off, but certainly long enough for her to undermine his machinations.

She smiled sweetly into her teacup.

-0-0-0

Every report on the Edogawa child made him more appealing, Koln thought, reading the latest results of two weeks' surveillance as he wound his way deeper into the Org complex. (Ostensibly, he was inspecting the facilities; in truth, he didn't particularly care past security and accomodations, neither of which were in the outer maze of abandoned and low-priority labs.) Between his guardian and his little friends, the boy seemed to have the highest body count in Japan. A convenient detail to have in the child's history; who would suspect someone with such long-standing poor karma to be pulling the strings? Particularly when, with a little training, the boy could apply his experience to never dirty his hands with the actual work.

He dropped the file into his escort's hands without preamble. "The boy is always with Sleeping Kogoro," he informed her. "Arrange some murders in Beika-- discreetly. Don't repeat the Kaitou Kid fiasco, or indeed kill anybody yourself. I'm sure you know people with problems. Aggravate them. I don't care how or who they kill, just as long as your team can kidnap the boy without revealing us." He paused, meeting her eyes for a moment before she politely dropped her gaze. "Once you have him, implement 'Aleph'."

She bowed and hurried off, not foolish enough to delay his orders.

Koln almost smirked as he continued towards the center of the building, pulling out his phone. The reception bars flickered out, one by one, as he wound his way through concrete-walled hallways and into the basement. By the time he reached the new, steel door installed on a storeroom, the coverage was completely gone.

He flicked on the light and opened the door to examine the room. Futon, clothing, water tap... everything looked to be in order. It needed just one finishing touch. Koln took a small box from his pocket, tapped out a fresh piece of chalk, and wrote on the wall in schoolteacher-neat lines. Then he set the chalk on the floor, stepped back, and left.

-0-0-0

There was something seriously wrong with the world when a teenage genius couldn't finish a seven-year-old's homework. Not that Conan wasn't trying, but for nearly a week it had been just one thing after another. If it wasn't a body on the way to school, it was one on the way home, or in a case brought to Kogoro, or somebody dropping dead in the restaurant the one night Ran hadn't cooked.

Even the officers were starting to look as worn-out as Conan felt. It was just like entrance exams all over again. This body needed more sleep than he'd had time for, dammit -- the only person managing so much as eight hours was Kogoro himself, and even he wasn't getting it all at once.

This time, Kogoro was catching his catnap up against a half-open sliding door, which led out into the garden the victim had been found impaled in. (Conan was never going to look at a sundial the same way again.) He fought off a yawn as he finished his spiel, brandished Kogoro's arm at the killer, and watched the police dogpile the protesting young man.

_Finally_, Conan thought, wobbling to his feet. Now maybe he could get the stupid worksheets done, and even -- please oh _please_ -- catch a nap before Kogoro dragged them both home. He scrubbed a hand over his face as he went looking for a quiet alcove in the house. Two murders in a single night, what the hell was in Beika's water this week? Maybe Ai had the right idea... locking himself in his room until the spree died off was looking more appealing with every late night.

It took a good ten seconds for Conan to realize the pun. Killing spree. Died off. Ugh. Definitely too many murders and late nights recently. He took a deep breath and exhaled, hoping the oxygen would help a bit, then trotted around the corner... into a faceful of pink smoke.

_Kid!_ Conan cursed, the world spinning to black... but not before he realized the arm scooping him up was entirely too rough to be Kid's.

_Oh shit._

-0-0-0

Saguru rarely appreciated the mornings his father was off the clock. Not that he didn't care to breakfast with more company than the housekeeper, nor was he unaware that she put a bit more effort into making a fine meal on those days... but Saguru had yet to succeed in getting to the newspaper first. Therefore, he was deprived of both masculine conversation and the news until after school.

Unless, of course, he played upon Kuroba's sensibilities and obtained the paper from him. That wasn't particularly difficult to do, which was why Saguru had walked a bit more hastily than usual on the shortest route to school, foregoing an extra coffee at the vending machines near the building.

The classroom was perhaps half-full when he entered, his classmates milling about near the desks of the more popular students. Kuroba was doing some form of magic trick for Nakamori, involving a lot of sparkles and smoke, with no sign of the paper upon his person or his desk. Saguru knew better than to assume Kuroba hadn't picked one up this morning, though.

The pattern for the usual before-school antics broke a few rows in front of Kuroba's desk, where a girl had fallen asleep, long red hair trailing across her folded arms and desktop. Saguru's eyes narrowed. Usually, she was in high spirits, holding court with a gaggle of helpless young men. Saguru himself had been hard-pressed not to join in, early in his academic career here... he'd only managed because the poor girl didn't look like she had space for yet another starry-eyed hopeful. Then he'd matched Kid's profile to Kuroba's, and the girl had become relatively unimportant in the scheme of things. Kaitou Kid vs. pretty girl had been no contest.

That didn't mean Saguru had completely foregone his sense of chivalry, nor his deductive capabilities. Without her horde of followers to block him, he paused next to the girl's desk. "Koizumi-san?" he asked, getting a twitch in response. So at least she wasn't fully asleep. "Are you unwell?"

She peered blearily up at him from under the curtain of her reddish hair, dark circles prominent under her eyes. Blinked. Then her hand snaked out --

"_Koizumi-san!"_

-- and fisted in Saguru's shirt, tugging him five centimeters to the left. The cool glint in her eyes all but dared Saguru to not humor her. Well. Far be it from him to disregard a lady's wishes... though asking for an explanation was perfectly within the bounds of propriety. "What on _earth..._?"

Kuroba yelped, Saguru glancing over just long enough to see the boy leap from his chair and pluck a thumbtack off the seat.

"_Ninjas,_" Koizumi growled.

Saguru blinked away from Kuroba. "... pardon?"

The floor heaved, slamming up against Saguru and tearing at his hearing. Heat blasted over his body, scoring his face with razor-thin lines of fire. _Shrapnel_, he thought dazedly over the shrieks ringing in his ears, then, _explosion_, as he failed to gasp for breath.

Even under the rush of panic -- he couldn't _breathe _and it _hurt _-- his mind raced to catalog what it could. Koizumi's hand was still curled around the front of his shirt; one of his own was tangled in a mass of human hair, and only she had hair that long in their class. Warmth trickled down his face, unmistakably blood, but there were no accompanying pools spreading across other parts of his body.

Then the weight across his chest blossomed into a sucking pain, smoke clawing at his throat as he finally managed to breathe, and his vision cleared. The outer wall of the classroom was a smoking ruin, shattered glass and twisted metal jabbing out of a massive hole. He could see into the classroom above theirs, a ceiling light spitting sparks and fiberoptic cable trailing between floors.

He couldn't see any further.

Saguru -- against his better sense -- turned his head, the bridge of his nose grazing against a metal bar. A desk's leg was impaled through the floor just to the right of his head, the ruined laminate top blocking his view of everything else.

There hadn't been anybody on that side of the classroom, anyway.

He turned his head down, finding Koizumi crumpled partly across his legs -- he'd not even noticed the extra mass, though he'd no doubt have odd bruises later -- then to the left. Kuroba and Nakamori had been on that side...

Kuroba lay crumpled in a heap, the floor around him bare. Nakamori was sitting up over him, somewhat, one arm held oddly and a leg jutting out at an unnatural angle. Tears streamed down Nakamori's dirty face already, but her face was set in an expression Saguru had seen on too many survivors.

She wouldn't pass out until she either saw every one of her friends loaded into an ambulance, jarred her broken leg, or was packed into an ambulance herself.

"Don't move him," Saguru rasped, as the girl tried to do just that. "Possible..." he coughed, god the _smoke_, "...spinal injuries." Exactly why he shouldn't have moved his head, but that was his decision. Though his judgement was likely not the best at the moment...

"Hakuba-kun..."

"Try not to move. The authorities will be here soon." Structural integrity compromised...

His fingers sought out Koizumi's head, just barely within reach, and he began checking her skull for bumps or soft spots.

Dimly, he started to hear sirens wail. A shadow passed over his eyes, and when he blinked it away, two white-clad EMTs were loading Kaito onto a stretcher. That was quick... how long had he been unconscious for, that they'd arrived, filled out the paperwork, begun searching the building and performing triage...?

Though it was odd they'd taken Kaito first...

Oh, look, shadows again...

-0-0-0

Conan woke to pitch black. His glasses were gone, he lay on something that offered just a hint of softness, and his feet were cold. He blinked once, twice, seeing no difference between open and closed eyes. No light source... where was he?

He pushed himself up, swaying slightly -- though that might've been his brain misinterpreting the sudden movement without visual data -- and patted himself down. Someone had replaced his clothing with something that felt like a _samue_: a long-sleeved cotton wrap top and trousers that were a bit short on him, the traditional ties replaced with velcro and an elasticized waist, respectively. No badge, no watch, no shoes. Even his underwear was gone.

Conan swallowed against the surge of nerves. These were just basic intimidation tactics, sensory deprivation and theft of personal items, and he would not let it work.

He went on to investigate the room, one handspan at a time. His head had been resting on a floppy pillow, which was sewn into the twin-sized futon he'd been lying on. That gave way to a cold concrete floor on three sides, and a matching wall on the fourth. Conan got to his feet, fingers dragging against the rough stone and mortared grooves of the wall, and leaned close. A whiff of bleach and cold-wet-stone -- a basement room, which was unusual in residential buildings in Japan, and one that had been recently scrubbed of the mildew that ran rampant to cause that.

The futon and clothing had been enough evidence this was a well-planned kidnapping. But the extra bother of cleaning the place indicated they expected to be keeping Conan for a considerable amount of time. Which meant no ransom and no further clues for the police, so he could only hope they'd kept his glasses or badge, with the tracking devices in them.

One hand held loosely out before him, feet shuffling slowly, Conan made his way along the wall, patting up and down as far as he could reach. He'd found nothing by the time he reached a corner a meter from the pillow side of the futon.

He continued along this new wall for another meter, then his fingers landed on a worn industrial spigot, while his toes brushed against a depression and a small drain. The drain's cover felt too slick to be anything but new, a grid of holes half the width of a pencil in the center, and the faucet's handle turned easily when he checked... though he didn't turn it enough to run the water. If they weren't monitoring him with an infrared camera or something, they might hear the noise.

The third wall was another meter past the spigot, and felt different from the first two, smoothed over and almost dusty to the touch, like a chalkboard. Conan frowned, tapping it with a fingernail. The shuddery way it caught was exactly like a chalkboard. What was that doing down here?

This wall was blank, nearly three meters long if Conan was guessing right, and the fourth wall went back to concrete. Barely two handspans later -- one had he been an adult -- his fingers touched steel. A thin piece, a seam, then more steel... there was no mistaking a door. Conan explored it by touch, looking for any distinguishing marks. He only found a smooth faceplate where the knob should've been, a gap at the floor just large enough for his fingers to fit through, and the other seam; the door's hinges must be on the outside.

Okay. He was locked in a basement storeroom, barely two meters by three, with one futon, a faucet that might or might not have clean water (and certainly wouldn't be warm), and a steel door that opened outward. No toilet or blankets. If there were air vents, they were up too high for him to find in the dark. The chalkboard wall was his best clue. Somebody had to have done that on purpose.

Conan couldn't think of any reason to put a chalkboard in a storeroom... but there was a very good reason to have one in a room with a prodigy kid. Namely, so the kid could write (which would require a light, though Conan hadn't found a switch for one). Which would only be encouraged if they wanted him to work for them in some manner.

He fumbled back to his futon and lay back down in the same position he'd woken up in, forceably squashing down a twinge of vulnerability. At his size, sitting up ready for action wouldn't do a thing. Playing possum might buy him a bit of time to think.

His initial deductions weren't encouraging at all. Sensory deprivation, theft of... no, _elimination _of personal possessions, and no control over light, food, temperature, hygiene, or bodily functions. That coupled with his earlier deductions added up to two things.

One, they probably knew his true age, and therefore that he was Kudou Shin'ichi.

Two, they didn't want him dead. They wanted him brainwashed.

Conan wasn't sure how long he lay there in the dark, feigning continued unconsciousness. He may have dozed off once or twice, in fact, but he was wide awake when the storeroom erupted in blinding light.

He couldn't help but flinch, eyes squeezing shut. The lock clanged, the door opening to let someone enter. Their boots clunked against the floor and a meaty hand clamped down over Conan's jaw. His eyes flew open even as a large, black-clad arm scooped him up, pinning his arms to his sides.

A second man, burly and dressed as an ambulance worker, trudged in, with a slim, barefoot figure in black _samue _slung over his shoulder. He bent to set his burden down on the futon, hand catching the teen's head as he shrugged the boy off. Messy brown hair spread over the pillow, the slack face tilting towards Conan.

_"Oh, sorry. I don't think we've met." The boy peeked up from behind a hand, violet eyes flashing as he shoved sopping wet bangs out of his face. "Kudou Shin'ichi." A quick grin. "Detective."_

Conan froze, staring at the teenager he'd deduced to be Kaitou Kid in the bathhouse just a couple of weeks ago.

There had been one clue he'd completely ignored in his shock over Kaitou Kid's murdered mother: they'd been in the bathhouse, scrubbing clean. Kid couldn't have been in disguise; it would've washed away.

How was that _possible_?

He could figure that out later. For now, they'd caught Kid. This changed _everything_.

The man holding Conan followed the ambulance worker to the exit, stopping at the threshold and setting Conan on the floor, giving him a hard shove back into the room. The door slammed shut in the moments it took for Conan to stumble to a stop, and the lock clanged once more.

Conan glared back at the door, then the ceiling with its one inset fluorescent light, then the anomalous chalkboard wall. With the light on, now he could see a message written neatly just out of arm's reach for him.

_His wellbeing depends on your cooperation._

The light snapped off.


	4. Chapter 4

Warnings, disclaimers, more evil coming. Mwahaha.

Pts. 12-16, remixed

_"Authorities have recieved conflicting reports regarding Aleph's involvement in this morning's terrorist bombing of Ekoda High. The organization is best known for the sarin gas attacks carried out by its predecessor in 1996..."_

Saguru failed to ignore the news coverage blaring out of bars and noodle shops as he clumped down the street, freshly released from the hospital and one of the most fortunate of his schoolmates. His proximity to the blast, specifically the gaping hole to the fresh air outside, had minimized his smoke inhalation. Plus, aside from blood loss, considerable bruising, and a sprained ankle (which required a weight-bearing cast), his worst injury had been a laceration along the side of his head. It had been stitched up and bandaged, leaving a rather gruesome reminder from temple to ear, but it was far better than the perforated brain and resulting death that would have occured had he been standing just one more step to the right.

He would have to do something extremely nice for Koizumi when she woke, accidental as her action had been.

A blocky, three-story building loomed overhead, and Saguru sighed. He'd hoped to hear back from Kuroba's mother by now, and therefore not have to face the conversation to come. This shouldn't be his responsibility... this decision shouldn't be in his hands.

Slowly, he made his way up the stairs next to the coffee shop. His phone would ring any minute, with news that Kuroba's mother had located her son, and he could leave without them ever knowing he was here. Any minute now. He paused before the faceplate on the door. Any minute. He lifted his hand to the buzzer. Any minute...

_Bzzzt._

Damn.

With a quick breath, Saguru composed himself. Loud thumping came from behind the door, not consistent with either Sleeping Kogoro or his teen daughter, so he dropped his gaze to the doorknob as the door opened... and found himself staring at the hem of an oversized, rumpled Tshirt. He jerked his eyes up, finding sharp green eyes glowering at him out of a dark, drawn face. As if his day couldn't get any worse.

"Good evening," Saguru said in resignation. Hattori Heiji. Why, of all people, did he have to deal with Hattori Heiji _now_?

Hattori didn't even bother with a polite reply. "Ya look like shit."

"Likewise," Saguru replied tiredly. "My classroom was at ground zero," he added, to satisfy the other detective's no-doubt-present curiosity. "May I please speak to Edogawa-kun?"

Hattori's face twisted, forcing the blood to drain from Saguru's face. Surely the child didn't know about Kaito already...? "He was kidnapped last night."

Saguru stared blankly for a long moment. Kidnapped. Both brothers vanished, within hours of each other. That couldn't be coincidence... which meant Kaito was likely not in any hospital at all. "In that case, I suppose I must speak to you. I believe..." Saguru swallowed. This was why he specialized in thefts, and in particular Kaitou Kid; people weren't hurt as often in thefts. "I believe our cases may be related."

"Our cases...?" Hattori's eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly, then flew wide. "Wait, ya mean the _bombing_?"

"Somewhat. I intended to inform Edogawa-kun..." Saguru bit back the rest of the sentence, pinching the bridge of his nose. He hadn't really thought much past 'my classmate's vanished, I believe he's a relative of yours, professional courtesy at the least requires that I bring it to your attention', and the fact that his only lead was... well, silly. How would an ordinary teenage girl have known anything?

But why else would she have said something so ridiculous, with such urgency?

Only one way to find out. Saguru glanced up at Hattori from behind his hand. "Might I inquire if the term 'ninja' means anything to you?"

"Ninja," Hattori echoed slowly, frowning. "Like... sneaky killers in black?"

'Sneaky killers' did seem an unnervingly apt description for the criminal element that would bomb a school. "That may have been what she meant."

Saguru had never heard the expletive that came out of Hattori's mouth, but he wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment. Hattori leaned back into the apartment, grabbing a jacket out from behind the door. "Goin' out!" he yelled, voice tense as he pulled a baseball cap from his back pocket... though he gave Saguru a hard, considering look, then jammed it right back where it had been before. "Kazuha, man the fort." Then he pushed past Saguru, a tilt of his head indicating Saguru should come along.

Bemused, Saguru turned and followed him back down the stairs, reading bad omens in the set of Hattori's shoulders and prowling footsteps. "Hattori-san..." He trailed off as the other boy ducked into the alley next to the building, pulling out a small motorbike.

At Saguru's raised eyebrow, Hattori snapped, "Yeah, I brought it. Soon as I get a lead, I'm gonna be there backin' up Ku-- _Conan's _damn ass. So whatever ya got ta say, stow it til we get there." He pulled out two helmets, shoving one into Saguru's chest and letting the blond fumble with it as he swung a leg over the bike. "And get on. As banged up as you are, you're gonna kill yourself tryin' ta walk all over Beika."

"I would not," Saguru muttered on automatic, not entirely truthfully. He buckled the helmet into place and slid gingerly onto the bike behind Hattori.

"Hold tight and stay still," Hattori ordered, revving up the bike. "You make us crash and I'll kick your ass all the way to hell." Then he snapped the visor closed without letting Saguru answer, kicked up the stand, and they rocketed off into the twisting streets of Beika.

Saguru had never been on a motorbike before, and certainly wouldn't have chosen his first experience to be with a near-stranger driving. He clutched at Hattori's jacket, managing to watch the street signs for all of perhaps three blocks before he gave in and shut his eyes. Hattori was either an insane driver, a severely upset one (which seemed likely), or riding a motorcycle was not an experience Saguru would care to repeat. Ever.

The possibility that Hattori was driving as frighteningly as possible to distract Saguru from retracing their route came to mind, but Saguru dismissed it as overly paranoid. Time was of the essence here, not secrecy.

Soon enough the low-rent, low-rise flats of the Mouri's neighborhood gave way to more expensive apartments, then to single-family homes that grew larger with each turn. The gate Hattori parked at failed to hide an art-deco residential monstrosity; a towering entrance with an upstairs room jutting out, the rest of the house sweeping back in two broad curves.

The gate was unlocked, though Hakuba spared a moment to wonder why the owner had put on a box with so many strange interlocking parts, instead of a simple lock or coded keypad. Particularly when Hattori needed only two seconds and a strange twist of his hand to open it.

Hattori rolled the bike in after them and let the gate fall shut, then walked up to the front door... and stood there, ignoring both the doorbell and knocker. Saguru reached around for the buzzer.

"Don't bother," Hattori said. A quick, hard glance, and he tapped the toe of his sneaker against the mat. "Pressure sensors. And," leaning towards the buzzer's pad, "a camera." He waved at the buzzer's faceplate, and in all seriousness pinched his own cheeks and pulled.

Saguru pressed a fingertip against the bridge of his nose, all too familiar with Hattori's move. Somebody in this house was worried about disguises. Lovely. They must've dealt with Kid before, and not on the best of terms if they wanted proof a visitor was _not_ disguised. This did not bode well.

"Come on, it's Heiji, lemme in already!"

Patience, as Saguru had observed before, was not one of Hattori's more prominent virtues.

Although, as the door clicked open and he found himself facing down the barrel of a semi-automatic pistol, it was perhaps a virtue the other detective shouldn't cultivate. It took time to get guns and ammo out of the separate safes required by Japanese law. And considering the pistol was being brandished by a seven-year-old girl, who shouldn't even know the combination to those safes... what were her parents getting while the child kept them pinned to the front stoop?

"Oh, fer... come on, Ai-kun," Hattori complained, hands up by his shoulders. "It's really me. Do I gotta tell about the hot spring and the poker game ta prove it?"

The girl's stare remained pinned to Saguru. "No," she replied simply, voice cold. "Who's he?"

"Hakuba Saguru," Hattori replied, "And he's too much of an ass ta be one of them." Saguru decided not to take offense, considering the term was being used as evidence that he was not one of the unwanted 'them'.

"You'd be surprised," the girl muttered.

On second thought, he would put the insult on Hattori's tab.

The child stepped back, lowering the gun and using it to wave them inside. "Get in here." With considerable misgivings on his part, and no trace of discomfort on Hattori's, they obeyed. As they toed off their shoes, Saguru kept a wary eye on the weapon, and the little girl studied him intensely in return.

"Hakuba Laboratories?" she asked, out of the blue.

Saguru blinked. "My grandfather's." She'd known that off the top of her head. How?

She beckoned, and Saguru, mindful of the gun, bent. Unsurprisingly, she reached up and pinched his face. Hard. Then spun on Hattori. "You're sure he's who he says he is?"

Hattori shrugged. "Met him on a couple cases, seen him on TV... he does the Kaitou Kid heists... ran a quick net search a while back. Face matches the guy his dad says is his son, an' it's kinda hard to fake solvin' a case in front of me 'n Ku--Conan. So. Yeah."

A long pause, then the girl flicked the gun's safety back on, sticking it in the waistband of her skirt. "He's clear, then." She gestured, and turned to lead them deeper into the house. "They wrote off Hakuba Labs. Nothing to catch their interest, and too small and unspecialized to bother with. Although," she cast a quick, smug glance at Saguru over her shoulder, "Maybe they screwed up this time."

Her fierce little smirk, coupled with the words, suddenly meshed with Saguru's errand. He'd come to find a seven-year-old who should be seventeen... he'd found one. There weren't going to be any parents bristling with weaponry coming out of the woodwork; there weren't any parents here at all. Hattori had brought him to see this girl. All because of ninjas, 'sneaky killers in black', and the disappearance of identical prodigy brothers. As well as a mysterious 'they', who the girl knew intimate details about... and was paranoid about being found by.

Saguru stopped short in the hall. "Dear god," he choked out. The two turned to stare at him, and Saguru rallied himself. "I may be jumping to conclusions, but," the mental image of a seven-year-old Kaitou Kid danced across his mind's eye, "how long until They do... whatever it is that shrank Edogawa-kun and..." The little girl's face drained rapidly of color. "And... forgive me, I didn't catch your name."

"Haibara Ai," Hattori supplied. "And yer barkin' up the wrong tree, Hakuba."

"Barking something, all right," Saguru muttered in English. Barking mad, as his life had been since he'd first heard of Kid. Kuroba. Who was not getting any more rescued while they danced around topics with only partial information. "Perhaps we should lay all our cards on the table before attempting to cobble together a working theory."

"Sounds like a plan." Saguru noted that Hattori hadn't said it was a _good _plan.

Haibara gave them both a withering, wary look, and Saguru sighed. Much as it grated upon him, perhaps he should make some concessions. "Considering I am the supplicant here, and as a gesture of good faith, I will offer my information first."

His hosts eyed each other, fleeting expressions conveying a silent conversation, than Haibara turned to Saguru.

"This way, please," she said, suddenly the gracious hostess. "We try to keep the lab clean of listening devices."

Saguru wasn't sure if that was a warning or not. But he gamely followed the child deeper into the house, keeping politely far enough back for her comfort, and well aware of Hattori too close behind for his own.

The lower level, rather than being the dank basement it should've been, was a bright lab worthy of any university. Fluorescent lights shone in a remarkably high ceiling, gleaming off scuffed linoleum floors and polished tables alike. Chemistry equipment sprawled over a long table on one wall, half piled high in a sink or air-drying on a rack over it. A smaller table near the center of the room held a pair of computers (so at least Haibara didn't live here alone) and a bank of monitors held sway in the corner nearest it.

Stools and ladders of various heights stood scattered around the room, but Haibara gestured them towards a round table and couch on the far side of the space. Hattori shoved a pile of blankets out of the way and flopped down, while Saguru more carefully found a clear narrow spot between a book and a throw pillow. But no sooner had they sat down than an insistent, discreet beeping began.

"Aw hell," Hattori muttered, his head thunking against the back of the couch. Haibara ran to climb up on a tall lab stool among the machinery, then clicked on several monitors and began to fiddle with a joystick, staring intently at a large screen.

Saguru didn't recognize the image, though it was too dark to make out more than maybe-a-doorway and movement from this angle. "What's that?"

"Alarm on the neighbor's place," Hattori answered darkly. "Somebody got in."

How paranoid _were_ these people? "The _neighbor's _place?" Saguru echoed. He got only a grunt of agreement, and an extremely obvious sign of distress: Hattori tugging at the side of his cap, not-quite trying to twist it the right way around.

A few clicks of a mouse, and tension drained out of Haibara's shoulders. "It's the Kudous," she announced.

Kudou. Kudou... why did that sound familiar? Certainly not the yakuza lord, he'd died just a few months ago... wait. Crime lord, crime, detective, _famous _detective, the son of the mystery author who'd given Kid his name... "Not Kudou _Yuusaku_?" Whose seventeen-year-old son hadn't been seen in public for months, and had looked so very, very familiar that time Kaitou Kid had impersonated him. "I think I need to sit down," Saguru said weakly.

"Yer already sitting."

"Oh. Oh good." Edogawa Conan. The missing Kudou Shin'ichi. It explained so _much._

Fingers snapped in front of Saguru's face, making him jump. "Spill," Hattori ordered.

"I..." Saguru paused, took a deep breath, and let it back out slowly. He was starting to get a good idea of the extent of their necessary paranoia. "I'm going to reach for my wallet," he said, suiting action to words. Under Hattori's narrow-eyed stare, he pulled out the billfold and flipped it open to the thin picture insert Aoko had gifted him with ages ago. Most of the plastic slots were empty, but two were not: one aging, dogeared family photo, taken six years ago when both his parents had been in the same country for Christmas, and one brand-new snapshot, taken a mere four months ago. It wasn't a particularly good picture of himself, Saguru thought, given that Kuroba had just dumped snow down his back... but it was an _extremely_ good one of Aoko and Kuroba.

Then he slid the open wallet across the table.

"Edogawa Conan and Kaitou Kid are twins," Saguru said simply.

He sensed more than saw Haibara snap around on her stool, Hattori sitting bolt upright. "Yer shittin' me."

Saguru shrugged, wincing slightly as it pulled at one of his deeper bruises. "I did the genetic analyses myself... and I'm not known for my sense of humor." Ignoring the all-too-emphatic snort, he tapped Kuroba's picture and added, "This is the only one of eleven people in Japan who matches Kid's profile, unofficial though it is, lives near Tokyo, and has been in the country and out of the hospital for every Kid heist. It's not enough for court, however..." _It's quite enough for me_, he left unsaid.

Hattori let it go. "And?"

"He was removed, unconscious, from the blast site in our classroom and has yet to be located."

A long moment passed. Then Hattori leaned forward and plucked the photo insert straight out of Saguru's wallet. "You stay here," he said, a tight rein on his voice, eyes snapping to Haibara. "Ai-kun?"

Saguru twisted just in time for his eyes to cross on the barrel of the gun.

"Nothing personal," Haibara said, as Hattori got up and left.

Saguru swallowed, lifting his hands harmlessly into the air. "All things considered," including the fact that she was still small enough that she needed to hold the gun with both hands, and Saguru was already several centimeters and kilograms larger than most of his Japanese peers, "None taken. Might we adjourn to the--" Somewhere upstairs, a door slammed. "--monitors?"

The gun didn't move, but Haibara tipped her head and stepped to the side. Saguru stood and took her former stool before the large screen, keeping his hands carefully visible at all times. From this angle, the image was much clearer: an unlit foyer, the last dregs of sunlight streaming in through the windows. A large suitcase and two pairs of shoes, a man's loafers and woman's low heels, sat lined up against the wall and hallway step, respectively.

Only a few minutes passed before the door opened and shut again, Hattori briefly backlit, then momentarily blacked out as the camera adjusted for light levels. There wasn't a lot to see, really: without sound, the monitor was only good for identifying intruders and a bit of lip-reading. But Saguru could very well see the wariness when Kudou Yukiko stepped out of a nearby room, expressed in the unquestioned pinching of faces and repeated when Kudou Yuusaku came onscreen.

The conversation after that, for all that it wasn't at a good angle for lipreading anyway, was brief. Some bowing and likely an exchange of pleasantries, as hurried as either side could get away with, then Hattori brought Saguru's snapshot out and handed it to the slim woman onscreen.

To her credit, Kudou Yukiko's long retirement hadn't weakened her skills as an actress: her face remained natural and relaxed, not betraying so much as a double take at her son's doppelganger. She also apparently held enough respect for Hattori that she didn't affect confusion at being given the photograph. With a sidelong glance at her husband, she tucked the picture into an inner pocket of her jacket.

So, Saguru thought, the husband would be the one to watch for fleeting, telltale expressions.

On the monitors, the Kudous stepped into their shoes, wheeled out their luggage, and followed Hattori from the house.

"Thank you," Saguru murmured, raising his hands towards the keyboard. "If I may?"

"Turn it off," Haibara replied.

Saguru obeyed, putting the system into sleep mode, then returned to his seat on the couch. Just in time, too; a few minutes later, the door upstairs clunked open. Hattori's voice called out, "It's us!", as heavy footsteps started down the stairs.

Haibara put the gun away just as Hattori reentered the room with an older, moustached and bespectacled version of Kuroba Kaito hard on his heels. Saguru blinked. Good lord... no wonder no one had ever suspected Kuroba and Edogawa of being related. Kuroba was unimaginable as anyone but the magician Toichi's son, and likewise was this man unmistakably Edogawa's father.

Kudou Yukiko's face appeared in the gap between stairs and ceiling, the woman herself only halfway down the stairs. "Haibara-san," she brandished an oversized phone -- it took a moment for Saguru to recognize it as a satellite phone -- and asked, "Mind if I use your rooftop? I need to call Kuroba-san." At Haibara's permissive wave, she vanished.

The door upstairs slammed shut once more, and Saguru was left facing Kudou Yuusaku. Under any other circumstances, Saguru would no doubt embarrass himself over meeting the famed author. As it was, however, he simply stood and bowed.

Yuusaku set the photograph down with measured movements. "This is yours, I believe?"

"Yes sir." He gathered up the picture and his wallet, as a raised eyebrow invited him to continue. "Hakuba Saguru. It would be a pleasure to meet you, but as it is," he shuffled the picture and insert back into place, "I apologize for being the bearer of bad news."

"The bombing at Ekoda High, and Kaito-kun's disappearance," Yuusaku agreed tightly. "How did you get mixed up in all this?"

Saguru winced. Against all this blatant, justified fear, the precautions he'd so completely ruined... the sheer pettiness of seeing Kuroba-kun fall off that bench stood out in sharp relief.

He really hadn't thought it through, all those weeks ago, why the brothers might not know of their relation in the first place. His motivations were mostly immature, in retrospect... a bit to warn Kuroba-kun of the risk, somewhat more of his white-knight complex to right the injustice of separating children, a measure of his deep-rooted need to uncover truth... and a whole lot of wrongfooting Kuroba-kun and getting the best of him for a change.

Time to pay the proverbial piper. "I'm afraid I'm the one who uncovered, and alerted Kuroba-kun to, the fact of his relation to... Edogawa-san."

"Best stick to that name, yes." Yuusaku kept him pinned under his stern gaze for another, too-long moment, then sighed and pulled over a nearby stool. Settling himself on it, he folded his hands before him, and cast his eyes over the three teens. "I'm afraid, Hakuba-san, that Yukiko and I haven't calculated you into our contingency plans."

Obviously not.

"Nor," he added, "will you be able to find the Kurobas when you return to Ekoda. By now she'll have abandoned the house. Kaito isn't fool enough to return there when he escapes." A pause. "This means that any place that Kaito or Conan may see as safe haven will be watched by the Black Organization."

Sneaky killers in black, people who could bomb a school with impunity in _Japan_, people who could turn an adult into a child... had they already applied that to their own assassins? Was that how they'd gotten the bomb into the building so easily? People with the numbers to watch anyplace deemed safe haven, from Tokyo to Osaka...

They were all in terrible danger.

"So," Yuusaku said, spreading his hands out. "We need to accommodate you in our plans. Let's get to work."

-0-0-0-

Conan wasn't sure how long he sat there in the dark, chin resting on his knees and bare feet barely on the narrow mattress, staring blindly towards the chalkboard wall. Certainly long enough to start having trouble ignoring his hunger pangs; long enough to feel matching rumbles from Kid's stomach, pressed low against Conan's back.

Not that food was anywhere near the forefront of his mind. _That _ran in circles, trying to parse together what little information Conan had.

He'd previously concluded that his captors knew he was Kudou Shin'ichi. The room was constructed with too much caution to hold a mere seven-year-old. Kid's presence, however... since he was a brilliant and proven escape artist, the room's construction made much more sense. However, considering just _how_ good Kid was, the room might actually be too _low_-security. That would indicate that Conan was here as leverage against Kid... but any random child off the street could do that, and a normal kid would be a lot less help than a proven genius in that case.

So would grabbing one of Kid's civilian friends, unless their captors had gotten Kid on a heist. Considering that Kid hadn't sent out a heist note by the time Conan had been captured, and by the rumbling of his stomach he hadn't been here more than a day and a half, that was unlikely. But how good were these guys to figure out who the hell Kid _was?_

Conan's gaze dropped instinctively towards the spot the teen's head should be, though he couldn't see it. There... was another possibility. Kid looked exactly like Kudou Shin'ichi. Their captors were obviously after geniuses. If they thought Kid was _Shin'ichi_...

The room's security level, and Conan's presence, fit that scenario all too well. Use Shin'ichi's deductive abilities for themselves, use his young, impressionable "distant cousin" as leverage and additional brainpower...

Ohhhh, were they in for a surprise.

Conan buried his grin against his knees, rocking slightly as his spirits lifted. About time Kaitou Kid put his skills to use harrassing criminals instead of detectives.

That just left figuring out who'd actually caught them. If they thought Kid was Shin'ichi, it wouldn't be Black Org. They wanted Shin'ichi dead. That left... Vermouth, or an unknown gang.

Behind him, the slow, rhythmic press of breathing hitched, and Conan froze.

Theory was all well and good. But he still hadn't deduced if these guys were bright enough to have or cared about surveillance. Cameras equiped with infrared or night vision, microphone pickups... if these guys were Org, they'd have both, and somebody watching the coverage live. If they weren't Org (which was dependent on who they thought Kid was), they might have neither camera nor mike, or only one of either, or something only activated by motion or sound, or nobody actually watching the coverage around the clock.

Worst-case scenario, they had mikes, night-vision cameras, and live surveillance. Which meant Conan should've laid down a while ago to get his mouth near Kid's ear, to tell him to keep faking continued unconsciousness right now.

Conan bit back a curse under his breath, and waited, muscles stiff, for Kid's first waking action.

And waited.

The muscles against Conan's hips slowly tightened, a barely-discernable thrum of tension setting alarms blaring in Conan's head. Kid was definitely awake now, and going to do _something_...

A careful, deep breath pressed flesh testingly against Conan, and Conan pressed back before he'd quite realized it.

What was Kid _doing..._?

The only point of contact between them was Conan's butt against Kid's side. As small as he was, the breadth of that couldn't be mistaken for an adult's presence in Kid's captivity. If he'd been Kid, if he'd woken with somebody pressed up against him (even as impersonally as Conan was) he would've done his best to subtly figure out something about that person too.

If he'd been thinking as coherently as Kid seemed to be, that is. Lucky them; Kid had been out too long to have been taken out by his own drugs, as Conan had been, so to have him thinking this clearly right off the bat was fortunate.

So if he were Kid, and thinking clearly enough to figure out "danger, stay still, child present and conscious", next he would probably slit his eyes open just enough to see there was nothing to see. Blink to make sure he wasn't blindfolded. Then, to figure out what he was probably lying on...

Yup, the press of Kid's stomach shifted downward. There was an unmistakable difference between beds and futons, and the solidity underneath them was it.

Conan felt Kid inhale more deeply, to catch the scents of concrete, damp, and bleach. He waited, letting Kid process that for a minute or two, then pressed back against Kid again, two quick bumps in succession, asking. He needed more information.

Kid stilled, the coiled wariness easing down a notch. It felt almost quizzical to Conan, as if considering an answer.

Then, a gentle bump back.

Conan lifted his head, turned it to face Kid's. "Hey, _niisan_, are you alive?"

Kid froze.

Conan made his voice smaller, younger. "... niisan?"

A discernable, pained sound. "Think so?" Kid replied weakly. The hair on the back of Conan's neck prickled. The inflections weren't quite right, but that was almost exactly the voice Conan used on his bowtie for Shin'ichi.

_Get a grip,_ Conan told himself firmly. Kid had used that voice before, in the bathhouse, and it was well within range of 'Shin'ichi confused and feeling like crap'. Though it wasn't that far different from Kid's heist voice...

"Not sure about my stomach," Kid added. "What happened...?"

Down to business. "Dunno about you," Conan said. "I got grabbed off a crime scene." Kid made a curious sound.

Shoot. If they thought Kid was Shin'ichi, it would look weird if Conan introduced himself... but if they thought Kid was Kid, it would look weird if Conan didn't. Conan wouldn't be expected to recognize... but actually, he'd gotten a short enough glimpse that he could easily mistake Kid for Shin'ichi. No introduction, then.

"Thought it was Kaitou Kid for a second," Conan went on. "The same gas. But the guy who grabbed me was too rough, and this isn't Kid's style at all." Come on, any second now... The guard should either have standing orders or alert the guy in charge, if there was a guard and the guy was on site.

If Conan was the guy in charge, he'd want to be there when the drugs were expected to wear off. But he might also want to watch and see what his captives made of each other. That might make it take longer for the jerk to get here. Hm...

Kid turned onto his side, an elbow nudging at Conan's hip. "When was that?" he asked.

The case? "Thursday evening."

"Ah." Kid's voice was sounding sharper now. "I hadn't yet read the paper. Was going to read it on break... I was at school. Friday morning."

Their captors could've taken Conan on a train or a plane with pressurized cargo space, or even had a charter plane, but they would've bothered to change out of their ambulance worker disguises had they needed to get Kid onto one. So given what driving in Tokyo was like, how much time had passed between Conan waking up and Kid's arrival, and how much since then... it was probably Friday night and they were still in eastern Japan.

Kid shifted to sit up, and his hand clamped on Conan's shoulder a split second before the light clicked on.

The door clunked open, and...

Oh _fuck_.

Conan remembered the guy. The Syndicate's false FBI agent, from that whole mess with Kir. Aging, stern-faced, hollow-cheeked, dressed in black... Koln. That was his name. Koln.

Conan instinctively moved to stand, but Kid's hand kept him in place. Refusal to acknowledge the psychological advantage? To let Koln know how vulnerable sitting at his feet really felt? Or just his body lagging behind his mind in recovering from the drugs?

He couldn't tell. But he could follow Kid's lead this once. They needed to work together to get out of here, anyway.

"Edogawa Conan and Kaitou Kid." Conan's stomach clenched, but those cool eyes bypassed him to land on Kid. "I've been waiting to meet you, Kuroba Kaito-kun."

Kuroba Kaito. They knew Kid's _name_. And from the way Kid's hand tensed on Conan's shoulder, it was his real one, too.

"If I may call your attention to the far wall," Koln said, gesturing at the chalkboard wall with its neatly printed warning. Conan barely glanced at it, remembering the inscription all too easily.

_His wellbeing depends on your cooperation_.

A pause. "That's... eloquent," Kaito said, voice sliding towards Kid's harder tones. "I presume it applies to both of us."

Koln inclined his head in agreement. "Our studies indicate you've inherited the Kumori woman's pyrrhic nature. Edogawa-kun circumvents that nicely."

"It's inspired." Kaito's tone was not complimentary in the least.

"Of course," Koln went on, ignoring Kaito's comment, "Edogawa-kun's abilties have earned him his cousin's place, as well." His gaze flicked back to Conan. "My condolences for your loss."

Conan stared. What the hell was going _on_?

"And yours as well, Kaito-kun."

Kaito's eyes chilled. Conan had to agree: Koln had taken enough liberties using Kid's true name at all, much less that casual a form.

Koln paused. "I see." he murmured slowly. "You've not yet begun to wonder about your paternity." Kaito's hand twitched, weight lifting from Conan's shoulder. "You may call me Grandfather."

Conan felt the blood drain from his face, Kaito's taking on a greenish cast even as Kid's fiercest grin snapped on.

"That's generous of you, but I'd rather not."

The next thing Conan knew, he was nose-to-concrete, ears ringing and Kaito's hip digging into his stomach. He stared as Kaito helped him sit back up, watching Koln's expressionless face, the hand dropping back to his side.

Right. The message on the wall. Kaito mouthed off, Conan got whapped. Lovely. Ow.

"Understood... _Grandfather_," Kaito bit out.

Koln's gaze dropped to Conan. "And Edogawa-kun may call me Sensei." Conan glowered at Koln. "Won't you, Edogawa-kun."

As long as it wasn't Grandfather. Gods. Conan let his voice waver. "Yes... sensei."

"Very good," Koln said. "If you get up, you may use the restroom."

Gee, a reward for obedience. Not surprising. But a seven-year-old would be pretty damn confused right now, so... Conan bit his lip, then caught Kaito's shoulder and levered himself up, clutching a bit more tightly than necessary. He stepped onto the cold concrete floor, casting a wary glance up at Koln, and twitched when Koln placed his hand between Conan's shoulderblades.

That impersonal gesture guided Conan out the door, and as Koln paused to close it, Conan managed to catch Kaito's eye. The teen, still seated on the futon with legs akimbo, offered up a smirk in the split second before the door fell shut.

Koln twisted the deadbolt into place, then flicked a light switch next to the door off.

-0-0-0

The lights went out again, and Kaito exhaled a silent breath. Gods. It made too much sense. If Hibari had been in Org, or recruited for it, and hidden her kids... Koln's grandsons... from them...

Kaito swallowed back bile and slowly began to stretch. No. That's what Koln wanted Kaito (and Conan) to think. True or not, Kaito couldn't afford to start thinking of Koln as a blood relative. That way lay family ties, clan loyalty, recognition of Koln as someone with authority over them...

He tucked his feet between thighs and stomach to warm them, and bent forward, arms reaching for the ceiling behind him. _Breathe. Two. Three._

Conan was kin. Kaasan, for all she wasn't blood, was kin. Koln was _nothing._

_Six. Seven. Out. Thirteen. Fourteen. Breathe..._

Kaito quickly smothered the count in his head. Keeping track of time was going to do no good here. It might even make things worse, the way captives were supposed to get twitchy about having no control over the timing of meals, lit periods, ability to sleep...

Control was the key. Control Kid's skills, compartmentalize that Grandfather was Not Family, watch for a chance to escape...

_Forty-two... forty-three..._

Arrgh. Good thing they hadn't grabbed Hakuba. Strong as he was, he'd still snap right quick without a clock.

_Fift_--

The bottom dropped out of Kaito's stomach. _Hakuba_.

Kaito shifted to another pose, sitting up to hook his ankle behind his head, and hoping by all the spirits that the cameras couldn't pick up on how the blood drained from his face... or that the guards would attribute it to the change in position. Because Hakuba would have had _hours_ to search for Kaito by now.

The one blasted thing about detectives was how predictable they were. Kid tailored his riddle-notes to be understood only by the best of the best, by the people whose thoughts he could follow, the people who could fit themselves into his mindset and vice versa. It made the heists a more challenging game, fox and hound circling each other in endless rounds of feint and counterfeint... but it also meant that even outside the heists, Kaito knew fairly well what Hakuba would do.

Hakuba was going to discover Conan's disappearance within the next few hours, if he hadn't already... and _he didn't know about the Black Organization_. He wasn't paranoid enough to avoid the police; hell, his own father was the Chief Superintendent. The only thing standing between Conan's identity and the moles in the department would be Hakuba's own hubris.

Smug bastard that Hakuba was, he'd still been getting better about balancing that superhero complex with his sense of justice. With Kid's help, of course. But this might be the point where that came back to bite Kaito in the ass. If Hakuba's pride buckled under his need to see Kaito and Conan rescued...

Koln would have the perfect weapon to break Conan in two seconds flat.

But if Hakuba didn't reveal the relation, could he work around it? Having two known geniuses connected to Kaitou Kid disappear within a few hours of each other...

Kaito's mental image of Hakuba suddenly gained a squad of hulking bodyguards.

Yeek.

Okay. Thinking too much. Break it down. Either Hakuba would tell, or he wouldn't. If he did, Koln would realize Conan was the late Shin'ichi and break it to him badly. If he didn't, Koln wouldn't. Simple as that. Fifty-fifty.

... except... it wasn't quite that simple, was it? There'd been that narrow miss, when Koln had extended his condolences. Only two or three more words, a slight shift in the phrasing, and it would've been condolences for the loss of 'Kaito's brother Shin'ichi'.

So... that was more a two out of three chance, wasn't it? That Conan would find out from Koln, and that Conan would realize Kaito had kept it from him.

Kaito grit his teeth, managing to keep his face neutral, at the thought of the explosion that would cause. Lovely. And it wasn't as if he could--

Well. No, he probably could tell Conan in here without blowing Conan's secret. It wouldn't be that difficult to speak in terms of 'my late brother', and twist the conversation so Conan's horror looked like a child grieving a favorite relative. The problem, of course, was that they both needed to be functioning, not in shock, to get the hell out of here. And what with Koln already trying to mess with their heads... this was _not_ the time for Conan to hear about being Kaito's brother, not from Kaito or Koln.

If Kaito could just make sure Conan knew Kaito had something to tell him, before Koln found out and _did_...

The door clunked open without preamble, Kaito tumbling warily out of his stretch as Koln shoved Conan none-too-gently into the dark and shut the door behind him. Then the overhead lights flared on, leaving Conan standing awkwardly at the edge of the futon.

He didn't _look _any the worse for being in Koln's hands, at least, but looks could be decieving. Kaito drew a leg up and rested his head on one hand. "Hey," he said softly, unthreateningly.

"... I'm back," Conan said, in the same tone.

That was good. That wasn't broken, screaming hysteria or furious detective-style accusations. Koln hadn't gotten or used the information yet. Kaito had a chance.

"You okay?" he asked, just in case.

A shrug. "Yeah. You?"

"Could be better."

Conan hesitated, biting his lip. "I... never thought. That you..." His hand twitched in an aborted gesture around the cell. "So this is what you really look like? Kaito-san?"

"Well, no." Kaito plucked at the cuff of his sleeve. "I'm more a T-shirt kind of guy." That got a reproving scowl out of Conan. "But yup. This is my real face, that's my real name, and," Inspiration struck. "I'll tell you everything else if you think up a way to escape." The utter shock on his brother's face made Kaito grin his most infuriatingly toothy grin.

As soon as Conan recovered from the surprise, he'd focus on the 'think' part of that bargain. Meanwhile, Koln's people would be too distracted by the 'escape' part. Both should miss the important part of the sentence: that if Koln found out... if he used Shin'ichi's identity against Conan... then Kaito could remind Conan that he'd promised, and meant, _everything._

Unfortunately, that meant that after they did get out, he'd have to let Conan know they were related.

But the prospect of escape, and what they'd need to do after that to stay free, made that not seem so bad.

TBC


	5. Chapter 5

Warnings, disclaimers, etc.

Pts. 17-21

After Kaito felt Conan had gotten enough time for his brain to chew over the prospect of learning all Kid's secrets, he tugged his brother up against his side, covering the boy's startled squeak with a testing hum. He draped one arm warmly over Conan's shoulders, his fingertips curling around Conan's hand to land on the palm. Before Conan could twitch away, Kaito marked a few quick strokes on the sensitive skin.

_Ok?_

Conan went very, very still.

Kaito hummed out an octave from his speaking voice, heading down, then up. _What did you see out there?_ A quick cough helped him shift to a more airy, shy style, a girl he'd heard in passing on her cell phone a few days ago, and he continued up another few notes and down.

Slowly, a small fingertip traced against the back of Kaito's fingers. _Hallway dead-ends here. Left, three rooms, 6 mats each_ - meaning they were about twice the size of their cell - _no doors. End, concrete blocks, new construction. Up, security camera. Left, stairwell, straight flight. Door, half-window, barred, glass not bulletproof._

As Conan continued describing the place, Kaito switched to a tenor falsetto, trailing to the top of Hakuba's range - the guy could get pretty high up there - then dropped to the bottom of it and began reworking a pop song, starting in Kyuushuu dialect and working his way eastward. Conan's fingers twitched, even though Kaito wasn't using the pop singer's voice.

Meanwhile, Kaito plotted. Empty labs could have gas lines. A cabinet between the toilet and bath might have cleaning supplies. Cameras had electrical components. None of it might mean an escape, but Kaito wouldn't say no to some mayhem if he got the chance.

And if they couldn't swipe bits of any of that, the faucet had an industrial spigot, and they could use it to chip away at the mortar under the chalkboard paint. They might even manage to get out enough blocks for Conan to make an escape before they were caught at it.

Three songs and ten voices later, Conan wrote out _Right, stairs down, parallel ours, steel door, bulletproof glass, fingerprint lock. Right, our stairs_, and his fingers fell still.

Kaito squeezed the boy a little closer, and, with his voice warmed up, reached into the soprano register.

"What," Conan sounded as if he couldn't stifle the question anymore, "are you doing?"

As if he couldn't deduce for himself. Kaito shrugged. "You don't get a voice as limber as mine without a lot of work." At Conan's startled glance, he waggled his eyebrows with a comic leer. It startled a snort of amusement out of the boy. "That's better."

"That's not what I meant," Conan griped, despite the lingering light in his eyes. "Why are you being all...?" He shrugged pointedly against Kaito's arm.

Hm. Something to answer for Conan, or something Conan figured Koln's men might be wondering right now...? Kaito took a shot in the dark. "They want us to bond. We'll bond."

Conan raised an eyebrow. "Playing into their hands?"

"Can't afford to fall divided, can we, Tantei-kun?"

A pause. "... no."

Kaito smiled. "Good answer. So." Something he'd been wondering for a bit anyway... Kaito threw his voice as deep as it would go. "_No baa zhi no, sa tura ba ai shin_..."

The corner of Conan's mouth quirked upwards. "Your accent is terrible."

"So I've heard," Kaito replied lightly. "Do better." Conan's look turned wry. "Two octaves up, then," Kaito told him. "In your register. It'll lose something of the flavor, but can't do much about that for a few years."

Conan's glare darkened. Grumbling, he turned away, red dusting across his nose as he sang the line through once. Badly. "_Nobody knows the trouble I've seen_." Then he fell silent, eyes snapping to Kaito's face.

Well, that was half the question. "What the hell, Tantei-kun." He'd heard about Conan's tone deafness, and that was definitely tone-deaf. Except there'd been that case with the concert hall. "I heard you have perfect pitch. What's 440 hertz sound like?"

Silence. Then, "Bonding, huh?" Kaito nodded. Conan considered that another long moment. Then he raised his head up and let out a perfect A4.

Huh. Perfect pitch without relative pitch. "Okay, let's try a basic scale." And give any Syndicate codebreakers headaches. Thank gods for an eiditic memory. "261.626. 293.665. 329.628. 349.228. 391.995. 440. 493.883. 554.365." Conan gave him a fierce look that flicked up to the room's air grate (where any surveillance would be), huffed through his nose, then hummed a note. "Not quite. I think you've got 261. Edge it up a notch."

They worked through the scale slowly, Kaito directing Conan off the whole numbers to the right notes and hoping their watchers appreciated or loathed music enough that Conan's inability to hold a key would annoy them.

Between G and A, the door clunked open. Kaito and Conan fell silent as Koln entered the room, flanked by two burly guards. Kaito met Koln's gaze, carefully not moving his arm from around Conan. Tightening the embrace would signal that he was scared for the boy; letting go would hint at preparing for an attack.

"That is quite enough," Koln informed Kaito. "Get up."

Deliberately, Kaito obeyed. If his hand happened to squeeze Conan's shoulder in the split second while Kaito's body blocked Koln's view, well, he needed the help with his balance. Really.

Koln guided him out with a stern grip on his elbow. Past the three bare rooms Conan had described, up the stairs - which, Kaito noted, were of the same new construction as the wall on the right, the mortar bright and unworn - and through the barred door. Two steps right brought them to the steel door. Koln put his thumb into the fingerprint scanner, and the lock gave with a polite beep.

These stairs were older, possibly original to the building, made of welded steel with rusty discoloration along the side of each step. Their footsteps set the whole flight clattering.

It would be damned difficult to get up or down these stairs noiselessly, Kaito noted.

The hallway at the bottom led off to the left, unmistakably continuing from the prison hall on the other side of the new wall. A 6-mat storeroom stood empty next to the stairwell, just as on the other side, but the next room had been bricked up recently too. The end of the hall had another steel door with fingerprint scanner. Koln opened this one as well, to reveal a short hallway with yet another identical door.

Kaito had the sinking suspicion that there was some very dangerous stuff wherever Koln was taking him.

The last door opened into another corridor leading off to the left. Across this hall, rather than down it, stood a cheap interior door, not so much as a push-button lock on the handle. Kaito got a glimpse of a locked steel door down the hallway, where the bricked-up room should be, before Koln shoved him through the cheap door's entryway. Two steps further, and Koln shoved Kaito into what amounted to a clear plastic box.

A cuff snapped around his ankle before Kaito could leap the half-wall in front of him. Kaito spun on his heel just as Koln closed the booth's door in his face, locking it with a simple slide lock like the kind found on restroom stalls. Then he left.

Kaito found himself alone, trapped by nothing more than a manacle he could probably pick with a toothpick, in a long room that looked somehow very, very familiar...

_I hope I didn't see what I thought I did_, Kaito thought, not biting his lip as he slowly turned to face the long room.

A second booth. Concrete walls and ceiling. Dirt at the far end of the space, angled from floor back to ceiling.

Targets.

Koln had locked him in a firing range. Which meant...

The door opened again, and Koln returned with a handgun and a small paper bag. He set them down, pouring bullet clips out of the bag, on a tray set into the door that Kaito hadn't noticed before. It was designed so that the lid could only be open on one side of the door at a time, the sort of precaution that was damn smart if you were dealing with enemies who would kill.

Which Kaito was not. Though he could guess that Koln had plans to change that.

"You'll be demonstrating your skills," Koln told Kaito.

_Like hell I will._

"I'm well aware of your ability to not miss the target, so you will not be doing that. For Conan-kun's sake," Koln added pointedly. "As for yourself, nonlethal shots will be duplicated on the boy." He didn't so much as smirk as he continued, "You may decide for yourself if that means shots to the targets or your own body. Understood?"

Bastard. The fucking... _bastard_. "Understood," Kaito bit out.

Koln waited, hands perfectly still on the tray's lid.

Kaito's stomach tightened. "... Grandfather."

The lid slid back, leaving the gun ready for Kaito to take. With controlled, smooth movements, Kaito picked it up. A semi-automatic, as if he couldn't guess from the provided clips. It was a lot different from his card gun, but if he could believe TV even a little bit...

He kept his finger out of the trigger guard as he examined the clip. Bullets pointed _this _way, so the clip went into the gun _that _way. Then the top should slide back, and- Kaito hissed as the slide caught in the soft skin between his thumb and forefinger.

Damn guns.

Trying very hard to ignore the almost amused glint in Koln's eye, Kaito lifted the weapon with both hands, took aim - _it's just paper, just an outline, it's not any different than popping one of my own inflatable dummies no matter what it was meant to be_ - and fired a round.

Gut shot. Ow.

Kid guessed nineteen more shots in the clip, and worked them in a precise curve around the torso. Eject the old clip, put in a new, chamber it without catching his hand this time, fire. A line across, under the heart- _the target dot_, a rectangle up from the line...

Who knew. Maybe someone would find Kid's caricature in bullet holes in the trash.

And maybe he was out of bullets. Thank god.

"You have your father's eye."

Kid's blood went ice-cold, his mask slamming into place. Dammit, this was no time to be grinning.

Koln chuckled, a gravelly, disused sound that made the icy feeling settle into Kid's bones, making the joints creak with tension. "I doubt you're truly pleased by the compliment yet," Koln told him. "But I appreciate the effort."

_Appreciate it all you like, old man. When you've turned me into a killer, I'll be smiling like this over your grave._

A wave of nausea blotted out the rest of Koln's words. Kaito found himself mechanically returning the gun and empty clips to the tray, watching Koln press a button to release the cuff, letting the man pull him out of the small booth and through the halls. Upstairs, downstairs, back to the cell which opened with a key unlike the rest of the doors...

Blue eyes glimpsed before flinching away, pupils like pinpricks. They'd left his brother in the dark while Kaito fired and fired and fired again...

Kaito landed on his knees on the futon, Conan's grip on his shoulders the only thing keeping him from curling over himself and damn the cameras.

"Kaito! Are you alright? What happened?"

His hands were the only part of him not shaking, when Kaito curled his fingers around Conan's slim wrists. _Other stairs go to firing range_, he sketched with his thumb on the fragile underside. "I have my father's eye."

And he began to laugh.

-0-0-0

The bell jangled merrily over the door of the little bakery as Chris Vinyard pushed her way inside, the sound almost covering the click of someone picking up on the other end of the line. "Moshi moshi, oji-dear!" Vermouth caroled into her cell phone, getting in line for the counter.

A pause as good as a sigh. "_I take it you heard_," Koln gritted out. Vermouth felt her smile go poisonously sweeter.

"Oji-dear," she said, well aware that mixing languages like that got on his nerves. Not to mention that he could never quite tell if she was playing a part or disrespecting him. "How could I not? It's all over the news."

"_I'm rather busy, Vermouth_," he told her pointedly.

"I do hope it's worth it." She gave the man behind the counter a dazzling smile, and pointed at a beautifully garnished tart completely inappropriate for breakfast.

"_It will be."_

The baker gave her an incredulous look. Vermouth returned it with a strongly-accented, "Hai!", and his expression cleared. He may as well have screamed _Ah, an American, of course_, as he plated a slice of the tart and passed her down to the barista. "I do hope you won't mind if I see for myself," Vermouth continued, cheerfully gesturing at the type of coffee, flavorings, and cup size she wanted.

It felt so good to put her rivals in a bind. Koln wouldn't want her interfering, of course, but it would look worse to keep her out. It might give the impression that he didn't have his project under perfect control. Or, and he would definitely realize this, at least give Vermouth enough leeway to spin an argument that he didn't.

A glimpse of perfectly coiffed tea-blonde hair outside, and Vermouth said, "I am, of course, available any time, oji-dear, but it's most convenient for me... oh, say five o'clock tonight. Ta, darling!" She hung up on Koln's sputtering just as the bell rang over the bakery door again. "Yukiko-san!"

Kudou Yukiko made an excellent impression of being surprised to find Vermouth at the bakery nearest to the Kudou mansion, at an hour shortly after she'd tended to wake up while they were students. "Why, if it isn't Chris Vinyard! I don't think I've seen you since your mother was young." Which was an odd phrase, except Yukiko had never met 'Chris' as a child- the last time they'd seen each other, Vermouth was still playing the role of Sharon, Chris' mother. "How are you doing?"

Vermouth beamed, gesturing Yukiko to a cafe table. "I've been simply wonderful. And you, you look as healthy as ever. Still globe-trotting with Kudou-san?"

"Running from his editors, yes." She laughed, a polite little sound no more real than Vermouth's earlier friendliness towards Koln. "We just got in last night and haven't had a chance to stock the fridge, you know how that goes."

"I certainly do. Though I would think your son would-" Yukiko's smile didn't so much as flicker, and Vermouth pretended to check herself. "Oh, wait, he's about seventeen now? I do know what teenage boys are like. You'd best hire somebody to do battle with the leftovers, then, shouldn't you?" Giggle and smile, what offer of assistance, none here, oh no.

Yukiko giggled as well. "Actually, he's been off on his cases, the silly boy. It's my little cousin who's been sneaking food in- you don't want to know what a seven-year-old considers a proper meal!" Vermouth glanced pointedly at her tart, then back up. Yukiko nodded. "Yes, exactly. When I get my hands on that boy..."

"You haven't gone to his caretakers yet?"

A falsely careless wave. "He's gone and run off again. He," Yukiko pinked ever-so-faintly, "was raised in America, you understand."

"Completely," Vermouth assured her, ignoring the faux pas. "He must feel terribly trapped over here. But just you watch, he'll come dragging himself in like a cat soon enough, muddy and scraped and behaving either like he's had the best or worst time of his life. Depends on how much rain there is before then. Nothing more pitiful than a wet kitten."

Some of the tension faded from Yukiko's smile. "That sounds like something your mother would say. She always knew how to relieve my mind."

"I try. Sometimes." To belie the statement, Vermouth smirked and went on, "Have you been watching the news?"

"A little," Yukiko replied. "Just before bed. Though there's a story that's been on the radio and all over the little restaurant TVs."

"The school bombing, yes. Isn't it terrible?" Smile, flutter.

"That's just morbid, Chris-san. Things like this don't happen in Japan," Yukiko chided, with well-played propriety. A wicked gleam broke the mask, and she fell neatly into the role of gossiping housewife. "Did they say where it happened?"

Vermouth made a show of remembering. "I believe it was over in Ekoda."

"Ekoda? Good gracious, I'd have almost guessed right here in Beika, the crime rate's so skewed. But Ekoda! That's where my dear sensei lived- oh, I hope his son is all right. The boy must be in high school by now."

"Is that the sensei you and Mother studied under?" At Yukiko's nod, Vermouth waved a hand comfortingly. "He's a Kuroba then. He should land on his feet." Two cat metaphors in five minutes flat. Yukiko shouldn't need to pick up on it, but just in case she wasn't sure Vermouth knew the boys were related... "Why, if he's anything like I've heard his parents were, I wouldn't be surprised if he's helping with the rescue effort."

Yukiko nodded, just happening to catch a glimpse of her watch.

"Oh, look at the time!" she gasped. "My husband will be up and stumbling for his morning coffee any minute now! If you'll excuse me, it's been wonderful seeing you again." And with that, Yukiko darted to the counter to place her order.

Vermouth shrugged and started in on her tart, idly noting that Yukiko was getting far too many savory breads and pastries for two people. Full house this morning: that looked like enough to feed a few teenagers, like perhaps the Osaka boy and the young British detective who'd left the Mouri Agency the evening before.

Dear Koln was really going to kick himself for stopping surveillance after getting his little prizes. He wouldn't know about the young detectives, or this meeting with Yukiko, or the nice fat bank accounts that such a group could make available to assist in helping a couple of people disappear...

Though knowing that didn't change much at all, really. It just helped eliminate a few details from the later portions of her plans, mostly the need for enough untraceable income.

After all, it wouldn't do to just deliver the twins' freedom up on a silver platter. No, the boys were far too clever. How could Vermouth possibly live with herself if she didn't take the chance to test her bullets' mettle...?

Snickering at the pun, she tidied up her dishes, threw away the decorative paper doily and napkin, and headed out into an increasingly sunny day.

-0-0-0

_Heiji's head hurt, and he couldn't see._

_"Hey, Aniki, lookit here... we got ourselves a spy." Hard hands had a grip on his arms, in his hair, dragging him stumbling to pitch onto his knees._

_A soft, annoyed sound. "So take care of it." Behind his head, a hammer cocked, the soft click twisting like ice in his guts, but the second voice snapped, "Not like _that_. Not here. We can't afford that kind of mess- try that new stuff."_

_Cold chuckling, and calloused fingers shoved something small into his mouth, poking deep until he nearly choked, then his mouth was full of water and he had to swallow, couldn't breathe-_

_He still couldn't move, dark mist was in the way now and he was hot, hot, too hot-_

_"What on earth-?"_

_"Dammit, she must not have tested it enough-"_

_"Inexplicable pile of clothes my _ass_- I'll go raid the lost and found. We can't sneak him out looking like _that_."_

_Those same hands, much larger now - large enough to cover his full face, what was going on? - yanked cloth away, and he stared up into the steely blue eyes of two identical faces. Gods- they weren't any older than he_ _was-_

Heiji jerked up out of a sound sleep with his heartbeat pounding in his ears. He kicked hard at the clothing trapping him, rolling off the futon and out of the blankets with a thump.

Blankets. Normal-sized room. Normal-sized Heiji. And Kudou and that brother of his hadn't been found at three nor raised in the Organization. But god... what a clusterfuck that would've been. Could still be.

Dragging himself up, Heiji scrubbed the crud out of his eyes, then let his face fall into that hand. The bad guys had Kudou. Kudou had a brother. The bad guys had the brother. Kudou's brother was a pain in the ass criminal with more skill than sense. They were all in deep shit. The bad guys had Kudou.

If he was coping this badly, how the hell was Kudou holding up?

Heiji rolled his head, making a note to burn some incense and air the guest room out, then let his eyes fall on the next futon over. Tucked in on himself, Hakuba looked like death warmed over still, despite the drugged and no doubt far better quality sleep he was getting.

Bastard hadn't had the decency to breathe heavy while doped up on pain meds, much less snore, to reassure Heiji that the guy wasn't about to die in his sleep. Okay, so snoring would've been just as aggravating, but at least it would've been a healthy sort of annoying.

And a thought like that one really meant Heiji needed coffee.

Heiji dragged on a fresh Tshirt, folded the futon up, and wandered out to hunt down Kudou's coffeemaker. Maybe some breakfast, too, if he could find anything edible besides instant coffee in the place. He wasn't holding out much hope for that, though.

As he approached the kitchen, though, he caught a whiff of percolating coffee. Somebody else had gotten up first, thank the gods who looked after teenage detectives' caffination. Heiji entered the kitchen to find Kudou's dad and Haibara at the breakfast nook, reading the newspaper and a science journal respectively. Two mugs of coffee sat cooling before them; three more mugs sat in front of a half-full pot.

Kudou's dad glanced up over his paper. "Good morning."

"Mornin'." Heiji swiped one of the empties, finding sugar hiding behind the coffeemaker. "Thanks fer lettin' us crash."

"We have the space, and I wasn't sure Hakuba-san could stay on that motorcycle of yours. How is he doing?"

Heiji shrugged. "Didn't look worse." Didn't look much better, either. And considering the mess he'd just gotten roped into... "I'll keep an eye on him. He looks the type to get all broody when he screws up. Prolly need to kick him in the head a coupla times."

"Not literally, I hope."

"Naw. Holmes otaku, knows judo. Wipe the floor with my ass if I came at him bare-handed." Yuusaku didn't so much as blink, which Heiji appreciated. Way too many adults, especially outside Osaka, seemed to think he wouldn't do research. Idiots. Even Hakuba would probably have blinked at the idea of Heiji on a computer. Heiji sobered. "Hope he wakes up soon. I got no idea what ta tell the girls."

Haibara turned a page in her journal. "The lead didn't pan out."

Heiji's head snapped around to face her. "I can't say that! Neechan... she thinks Conan got swiped by a pedo." Hell, if Heiji hadn't known about the Organization, he would've thought that, too. Not that the Organization sat that much better with him. Who knew what they'd resort to?

Hard-faced, identical teens flashed through his mind, and Heiji shuddered.

When he looked back up, Haibara had her face pointedly back in her magazine, but Yuusaku's eyes were still on Heiji, no longer radiating hostly morning politeness. There was something more... calculating in his expression, something that pricked at Heiji's attention. Something that maybe said 'I have an idea' and 'we can finally do something'.

Yuusaku's gaze fell casually back to his paper. "When Hakuba-san gets up, and Yukiko gets home with breakfast, we can discuss that."

Sighing, Heiji plonked down in the chair across from Haibara. Hopefully, this wouldn't be a long wait.

-0-0-0

It hadn't been the least bit difficult to trace the money to a run-down box of an office building just far enough from the docks to be undesirable storage space, even in Tokyo. It had been slightly more difficult to count the comings and goings, marking the ebb and flow of guards and people she knew marketed themselves as personal trainers.

Not that Koln would be making use of them yet. But one had to establish a rhythm in the neighborhood, accustom what few locals there were to the presence of new faces, gain that veneer of unremarkability and respectability before beginning a proper, long-term operation.

Koln always had been concientious like that. When he could be.

Wearing the face of a girl no more than twenty-two, wispy straight hair highlighted in a stylish tea-blonde, Vermouth walked right into the tiny lobby and leaned over the empty receptionist desk to use the phone. "Koln-jiisan," she caroled into the speaker. "It's Vermouth!"

To his credit, the man didn't storm into the lobby. His face was a blank mask as he stepped calmly from a doorway some two doors down the hall behind the desk. Vermouth wiggled her fingers cheerfully at him, pretending she couldn't see the shape of the little gun pointing at her, hidden in a pocket of his coat.

Her smile was all teeth as she went on, "So what's this I hear about getting yourself a little hobby?" His eyes darkened. "Oh, dear, don't frown so- your face will freeze that way." She stepped around the desk and tapped one red nail almost - almost - on Koln's lined cheek, ignoring the flat-blade stare that followed the fingertip. "Come, come, let's see!" She let the smile widen a fraction. "I _insist_."

Now Koln twitched, head jerking in a barely-restrained, reflexive bow as he turned away from the door he'd come from, letting Vermouth pass into an unmistakable security center. The guard didn't swivel in his office chair, beady eyes flicking in a clear threat-assessment before returning to the dark monitors hung two screens high before him. Their images shuffled even as Vermouth watched: reception, two keypad doors on a pale hallway in split-screen, a dank-walled stairwell made of bright new wood, two figures - one half the size of the other - curled against each other in the shadowy greens and blacks of infrared technology, a screen showing the blank deep gray of a darkened room.

Five in the afternoon, and Koln had the kids in the dark. It was smart. Disorienting.

Not enough.

"Can we listen to them?"

The security guard glanced at Koln, whose face remained impassive and hard, then reached for the board with a poorly-hidden flash of exasperation. A flick of a switch, and a hidden speaker burst into staticky life.

_"... gonna start calling you nii-_jerk _if you keep this up-"_ Conan's voice groused, high and piping and unmistakably sulky.

_"Ah, Tantei-kun,_" the reply came, very nearly in Toichi's voice,_ "you make me so happy to know English."_

A strangled little sound. _"Now you've got _me _doing it!"_

Vermouth leaned over and turned the speaker off herself. "Cute," she said dryly.

"They've been at it for hours," the guard told her. "Songs, puns, books... it's all going straight to codebreakers, of course."

"And I'm sure they'll find quite a bit, too," she replied, patting his shoulder. The guard frowned at that, visibly closing off and turning back to his work with too much care not to look at Koln. Vermouth straightened and headed out of the room, getting a sour look as Koln fell into step next to her.

After the door closed, Vermouth smirked at Koln. "Codes? I wonder." The chatter could just as easily be a distraction tactic.

Koln seemed to shrug under his stony facade. "Does it matter?"

Probably not, if the goal was for them to bond. If it was for them to break, though... Vermouth arched a brow. "Does it?"

In answer, Koln opened another door and gestured her through.

They passed through a laboratory space, a small gym that was half obstacle course, a galley kitchen - one side a bench and counter setup facing the wall, the other a fridge-pantry-sink all in a row, rice cooker and electric tea kettle chained to the backsplash - a shower room, empty conference rooms... all the necessities. Koln made sure to point out venting systems, all with bars welded into the ductwork, security cameras aimed at locked plumbing and electric access panels high on the walls.

Vermouth oohed and aahed properly at the chemical labs - their neatly-labeled shelves almost bare, waiting for the later stages of the training, when the kids could be trusted with things more useful than table salt - the gun range, and the well-stocked armory behind its multiple locks. She wasn't nearly as impressed at the rudimentary costuming room, but Koln wouldn't expect her to be.

Costuming took care of shoes for the kids, which was one more thing off her list, though.

Finally, there was only one door left. It was a brown-painted steel door, with a square of glass crisscrossed by thin wires, industrial and ugly. No one would remark on the heavy deadbolt on the outside of the door: it looked like it led to a basement fire exit, rather than more rooms. Certainly not anywhere there'd be people.

The security camera at the base of the stairs didn't pan all the way to the end of the short corridor, Vermouth noticed, its tiny red light flashing in the corner of her vision as she preceded Koln down the stairs. (It was hardly proper, in terms of both guide and gender, but Vermouth knew Koln didn't trust her at his back at the best of times, much less in a dark space with only one underling witness. It was almost a shame to leave him alive.) Someone had sacrificed the cell door in favor of seeing the full staircase.

Koln stopped and waited a long moment, key glinting in his hand, before he jammed it in the lock and opened the door with a purposefully heart-stopping crash.

Vermouth ducked in before the lights completely flickered on, one hand out and scooping up a small fast-moving body before it could be propelled out the door. "Oh, aren't you _cute_," she purred poisonously, her natural voice sending Conan's eyes flying wide, recognition flashing under the mix of horror and fury. She ruffled his hair with a hint of viciousness, the threat plain enough to explain how his expression darkened.

When she pulled away, casually shoving the boy back to Kaito, she couldn't see the thin, dark capsule she'd pressed to Conan's scalp.

"Now," she said, grabbing Kaito firmly by the chin. "Let's get a look at you." Turning his face back and forth - gods, he looked like Toichi - Vermouth ignored the way Kaito's grip on Conan turned to claws, the spark of calculation in his eyes and the glinting of his bared teeth so close to the fleshy web between her thumb and forefinger. "You don't look much like Calvados, do you?" she murmured approvingly, pushing harder at Kid's jaw. Plastic buzzed almost imperceptibly under the tip of her thumb, a quick pulse of activation.

Kaito's breath hissed through his teeth. "Who...?"

"Ah." Vermouth let him go and beamed. "You can call me Neesan."

He managed not to pale. "Please tell me you don't mean that literally."

Vermouth burst into laughter.

-0-0-0

After Koln and the woman... Neesan, ugh, at least she'd admitted she was no relative... left, Kaito sat gingerly on the futon, pulling Conan close. The boy twisted away in simple surprise for a second, but then let himself be reeled in, Kaito's fingertips on his wrist.

Small fingers traced kana on his collarbone. _Vermouth stuck something in my hair_.

_Me too_, Kaito wrote back. The small, round sticker fit snugly against the hard knob just behind his ear, and had buzzed inaudibly on contact. It could be just about anything... a transceiver, a detonator, a patch of drugs... but at least that last one wouldn't need the electronics to vibrate, so it probably wasn't going to kill him.

Maybe.

He pulled Conan's head onto his shoulder, running his hand soothingly through his brother's hair, and encountered a flattened capsule hiding under the boy's cowlick. It was thicker than Kaito's disk, perhaps the thickness of a battery compartment cover, and fit completely under Kaito's fingertip. But the plastic didn't feel solid, more like the peculiar tactile sensation of a liqui-gel pill, and there was a tiny latch along one edge.

Hm. _Risk it all?_

Conan's expression twisted against Kaito's shoulder. _Hold still._ Then, without waiting for a reaction, Conan pressed his head up against the side of Kaito's, directly against the plastic disk.

It began to pulse quietly against their skin. One. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight. Pause. One-two-three. One-two-three-four.

Silence.

Okay, that seemed simple enough. One, eight, three, four. If the pause was a divider, eighteen thirty-four. Kaito's fingers moved as he considered the coding. It wouldn't be romaji, that only had twenty-six letters, so if you used it for kana... In the gojuon ordering, _tsu me_. In the iroha ordering, _so e_. In kanji, the order it was taught in schools at least, _dai chuu _or _o_-_kii mushi_, large insect...

Conan tapped hard against Kaito's collarbone. _Clock._ He didn't need to trace _you idiot_ after that.

Kaito grinned sheepishly into Conan's shoulder. He was really too used to layering as many meanings as possible into his puzzles. Eighteen thirty-four, about half past six in the evening, then.

So if he had a clock... what had Conan gotten? Kaito got a nail under the latch and flicked it open, sensitive skin rasping against paper folded tightly inside. _A note._

_Close it_, Conan wrote in response. _I'll read it when he takes me to the restroom again._

Whatever she'd written, Kaito thought, as he obeyed and shut the little capsule once more. If he'd been reading the body language between Koln and Vermouth right - mostly on Koln's side, Vermouth had been letting her artifice show, one professional to another - whatever she'd written, it was going to help them. Not Koln. Somehow.

That was going to have to be enough.

TBC

A/N's -  
- neesan: older sister, also to reference young unrelated women who are older than you. (If you're older than the young woman, it's "ojousan".)


	6. Chapter 6

Warnings, disclaimers, word.

Blatant homage to ysabet and nightengale's Three Thieves.

* * *

Ch. 6: Pts. 22 - 25

The trains had stopped running by the time Heiji coasted up in front of the Mouri Detective Agency. Though he'd tried to be silent, expecting Kazuha to have put Ran to bed hours ago, the line of lettered windows above him still glowed softly. He watched the flickering blue light for a long moment, before toeing the kickstand down and pulling off his helmet with a sigh.

"Hey," he said, nudging the warm weight on his back. "You awake back there?" He got a hum in answer, but Hakuba didn't budge; it had been a long day of preparation work, hashing out cover stories and establishing alibis. Even though the Brit had been taking his pain meds dutifully, he hadn't had that much of a chance to rest except on Heiji's bike. Heiji figured that Hakuba had to be crashing by now, and crashing hard.

He twisted around in Hakuba's loose grip, the other boy's helmet lolling onto his shoulder as he fumbled with the catch. "C'mon, up."

"'M 'wake," Hakuba mumbled.

"Uh huh." The helmet came free, and Heiji tipped Hakuba's chin up into the streetlight. The other boy blinked dazedly up at him, eyes almost black. "Yer pupils are huge."

It took a long moment for Hakuba to process that, pupils slowly dilating to focus on Heiji. "'S dark."

"True." Except that Hakuba usually used three words when one would do. Heiji lifted his free hand. "Track my finger," he ordered, watching Hakuba's gaze follow: side to side, up, down... "Well, ya ain't great, but ya don't seem too outta it yet," he decided aloud, tipping his head up and adding, "Hope yer judgement's not shot. Looks like we ain't got til mornin' to talk to the girls."

Hakuba blinked again, then followed Heiji's gesture to the lighted windows above. "... ah." This time when Heiji pushed, Hakuba slid off the back of the bike, and allowed himself to be half-steered into the building.

The girls were waiting when they finally reached the top of the stairs.

One look at Heiji's face was enough to kill the fragile interest in Ran's eyes.

"Over a day!" Kazuha blurted, one finger pointed furiously at Heiji's nose. "You said you got a lead and you've been gone over a day! No calls! Nothing!"

"Inside, Kazuha."

"But-"

"_In_." And he turned Kazuha around, practically shoving the trio up the second flight of stairs, into the apartment, and kicking the door shut behind him. Hakuba made a woozy beeline for the couch, while Ran settled in to a spot next to the phone, a pale ghost of herself. Heiji plopped down on the other end of the couch, jamming his hat backwards onto his head. "First off, pretty obvious I ain't got any leads. This whole case is shit and that's that. So I spent the day goin' at it from the other end. If I can't find where Conan's gone, I can damn well find how he _left_, maybe get somewhere from there." He jerked a thumb at Hakuba. "This guy's idea, that."

Hakuba rubbed a tired hand over the bridge of his nose. "Different training," he murmured. "Heist instincts."

"What he said. Conan got grabbed off an _active_ _crime scene._ The place was swarmin' with cops, every damn civilian over age eight was bein' watched by 'em. So how'd the bastard get to Conan in the first place?" Heiji's gaze landed on Ran. This much, at least, had to be true. "Cops weren't watchin' their own."

"Anybody in uniform," Hakuba said into his hand. "'S how that damn Kid gets around."

"So the perp was disguised as a cop," Heiji finished. "An' not in some cheap party costume. Cops spot that. He had to get a real uniform. So we've been all over town checkin' precinct storage, manufacturers... dry cleaners are gonna be the hard part, there's a million of 'em."

"Seventeen thousand and forty-two," Hakuba mumbled, "in the twenty-three wards."

Kazuha gave Hakuba a strange look. "... Who _is_ this guy, anyway?"

Heiji gestured. "Hakuba Saguru, Great Detective, Wolf of Europe, blahblahblah. His school got blown up an' he wanted to borrow Conan as a gopher while he searched out all his classmates." When that didn't get a confirming response, Heiji glanced over at the other boy. Hakuba lay slumped in the corner of the couch, hand still draped over his face, head lolling against the overstuffed back, out like a light. "Heh. Was wonderin' when he'd finally drop. Can you take the night watch?"

Kazuha blinked. "Night...?"

"Someone's gotta stay by the phones," Heiji explained. "Not for the ransom. They won't call that in if they think everyone's gonna be asleep. But in case Conan gets away."

"There's officers downstairs."

"An' we all trust 'em _so much_ right now," Heiji replied sarcastically. "They've screwed up too hard for that."

Kazuha nodded sharply. "And if I stay up... Ran gets her bed, you get the futon, and we can leave Hakuba-san on the couch." She stood and went over to Ran, speaking quietly. Meanwhile, Heiji pushed himself up and headed down the hall to Kogoro's room, to get the futon and blankets for himself and Hakuba.

And if, while he was there, Conan's hairbrush and toothbrush mysteriously wandered into Heiji's pockets, well... that was no one's business but his own. And Ai's.

-0-0-0

Hours passed. Over the course of the day, recognizeable only since Vermouth had delivered the mysterious capsule and sticker-clock, the lights flicked off and on five more times: half an hour, two hours, seven hours, ten, three, and it had been forty-five minutes now with the lights on. It was nearing seven o'clock again on either Sunday or Monday night, Conan guessed. Probably Sunday. Food had only been delivered once - two bowls of rice, which they'd had to eat with their hands - and Kaito had yet to be taken out for a bathroom break.

At least they'd had the drain. And Conan was well able to turn away and pretend Kaito hadn't needed to use it.

Now Kaito sat tailor-style on the hard concrete facing the chalkboard wall, chalk twirling in his fingers and eyes turned inward. Conan stayed very still, waiting, trying not to even breathe too loudly. He didn't want to break the chain of thought in a mad genius like Kid. Not now. Not when it might help get them out.

"Tell me..."

Conan looked up. Now that he wasn't interrupting, he could - and did - move closer, edging to his knees on the futon. "Hm?"

Kaito paused, then the light came back into his eyes, and he sat straighter. Conan had just a split second to realize that Kaito had decided to ask a different question, before Kaito cheerfully said, "You've never seen a heist note in progress, have you?" Conan _sputtered_, even as Kaito pulled him up to sit next to him. "It's an art, you'll love it."

"We've got to think of a way out!" Conan managed to yelp. "You can't be screwing around-"

"It helps me to think," Kaito replied flatly. Then he returned to his cheerful tone, tapping the chalk against the wall. "Here, I'm thinking the heist is us, yes? And 'Grandfather'," a flash of scorn, there and gone, "Being the bad guy behind the scenes... that's subject and guidelines, and the note's the sketch." He scribbled kana in quick, squeaky strokes.

_Something stalks behind the rows._

Conan frowned. "Seems pretty backwards." But that was how Kid thought, laterally and in loops, never straightforward. "Also, ominous much?"

"Our situation's a little darker than my usual style." He hummed thoughtfully. "Karma, number, psychopomps... ah."

_Beware! Beware! The children crow._

Another pause for thought, then:

_Missing three, taken eight (eighteen harvests, gone)_

"Why is this sounding familiar?" Conan wondered aloud, dryly. Kaito flashed him a tight smile.

_Should you find the children? The laughing one will know._

"I take that back. Now I'm not sure."

Kaito rested his chin on his hand, grinning at Conan. "What did you think it was?"

"... How familiar are you with American horror?" The grin widened, and Conan stifled the urge to smack his face in his hands. "Children of the Corn. You're _terrible_."

"I may as well use my bad accent to my advantage, ne?"

"I would never believe it was an authentic note. You realize that 'children' is a plural, right?"

Kaito's smile stayed perfectly in place, but suddenly didn't seem so natural. "The sperm donor was a child of the Koln."

Which explained the 'gone', if it didn't also mean their escape. Heck, even if it _did _mean their escape. Conan turned back to frown at the little verse. There were more meanings in there than the simple implication of Stephen King, weren't there? 'Missing three.' That would be himself, Kaito, and 'Shinichi' who they thought was dead... but Kumori Hibari had died just fifteen years ago, and Kaito had to be eighteen according to Hibari's school attendance records. If Org had killed Hibari trying to get Kaito...

The door clunked open before Conan could think any further. A new person stood before the usual pair of guards: a woman with a bland, round face, her hair and nails cut short, wearing a pantsuit and no jewelry.

She made a curt gesture. "Up, both of you."

Conan slowly stood, hearing the _tik _of the chalk falling to the floor as Kaito did the same. At the woman's direction, they followed her out the door and up the wooden steps, out into the empty white corridor of the ground floor.

It was the first they'd both been out of the room at the same time. But a quick glance at each other, the guards' bulk looming far too close, was enough to agree that this wasn't the time to bolt.

At the end of the left hallway, the corridor turned sharply right. Tucked into the outside corner were a pair of doors, one in each wall, and the woman unlocked each with a key, pushing the doors open to reveal tiled walls. "In."

With one last look at Kaito, Conan entered one room. The door shut behind him, key locking with a very final snick, leaving him alone in a tiny shower room. The wall shared with the next room - the one Kaito was presumably in - had a faucet, two nozzles helpfully labeled "soap" and "shampoo", and a built-in bench seat with a towel and clothing folded on it. Other than that, a showerhead tile in the ceiling, and a drain, the room had no features: no windows, no privacy curtain, no mirror.

In the next room, the shower came on, hissing quietly through the thick walls. Conan sighed, but shucked his dirty clothes - childishly tugging the wrap shirt over his head, so that he could pull Vermouth's capsule free - dumped them on the bench with the clean outfit, and turned on the shower too.

He was careful to wince at the first touch of the water, which was a bit too hot for his age, and jerked away from the primary flow. No doubt it felt wonderful to Kaito, especially on those bruises he'd tried not to let Conan see, but Conan would have to make do with splashing water on himself from outside the fall. A quick scrub with the unscented shampoo, duck his head forward under the running water as little as possible, try not to get suds in his eyes... a second wash with gloppy handfuls of liquid soap, he _missed_ having a washcloth to really scour the fear-sweat from his skin, splash more water on himself to rinse... and Conan turned off the water and grabbed his towel.

When he went to stick the capsule inside the waist of his new trousers, he found the waistband's interior stitching already undone, and a long strip of something that looked an awful lot like chewing gum over the elastic.

Conan's eyes narrowed, even as he carefully tucked the capsule in with the gum stuff. He knew he knew what that stuff was, but... aha.

He _did_ know what it was. And that meant he knew what the paper in the capsule had to be.

He knew how they were getting out.

-0-0-0

_1:57._

The tissue-thin map and guard schedule lay in a soggy, irretrievable puddle in the cell room's drain. Behind Kaito, Conan was curled up on the futon, eyes piercing through the thick stone in calculation.

_2:02._

Kaito tapped the chalk against his lower lip, chin resting on his hand and his fingertips oh-so-casually fiddling with his hair, there where the locks curled and spiked a bit between his ear and the nape of his neck. His own eyes were on the notes scrawling across the base of the chalkboard wall. Snippets of riddles wove between physics formulas, nonstandard variables - a sigma for gravity here, an 'n' for velocity there, 'b's in romanji and Cyrillic and dakuten marks for mass, sometimes switching within the same problem - vying for space with numbers in base 8, just close enough to ten to hide that they were for real values. Like the combined mass of Kaito and Conan. Or the minimum amount of chemically-activated plastic explosive needed to break steel.

His fingers brushed again over the clock sticker hiding behind his ear.

_2:06._

He tossed the chalk aside and stood, stretching. One hand surripitously palmed the explosives - the gum-like strip they'd found in Conan's fresh clothing, now torn down to the size of a real stick of gum - from the front of his wrap shirt. "Hey, kiddo. Up 'n at 'em."

Sharp eyes snapped to Kaito, and he grinned, adding, "Don't want to be couch potatoes. Come on, I can already feel my muscles wasting away." A quick pose, strong and sleek to belie the statement, and Kaito's fingers brushed one more time into his hair.

_2:09._

Stretch again. A quick squeeze and press - the first of four doses jammed in where the latch held the door shut - and a tumble back, and Kid landed in a perfect runner's crouch just as the lock cracked with a heart-stopping percussive _thump_.

Spring forward. Conan's hand in his - they mustn't lose each other - the door bursting away under Kid's linebacker charge. Concrete smacked against bare feet, then bare and creaking wood, just enough rebound to shove Kid that split-second faster.

Second dose, slapped into the deadbolt at the top of the stairs, and Kid ducked. The thump hit harder, one shuddering heartbeat like his ribcage was a bass drum. Kid leapt while his ribs were still juddering, Conan's weight an anchor into reality, and smashed through into office lights and wailing alarms.

Right this time, darting past the door to the gun range - one. Two doors. Three. Four. The route had to be perfect, or they'd end up trapped. Fifth door on the right, and Kid's hand tensed before he could squeeze, reflexes registering before the mind could engage. This door was an interior hollow-core door, a poplock a toddler could break. Kid twisted, one powerful kick breaking the door open with a bang, and they jumped in just as the first shots rang out, red-tufted darts burying themselves in the corner of Kid's vision.

Inside, Kid shoved Conan forward as he slammed the door shut. A yank at the steel racks to either side sent them falling with a deafening clang, costumes billowing in the wreckage. It wouldn't last a minute against the guards.

The sole, tiny window on the far side of the room had an iron bar bolted across it. Kid hurtled over Conan at the shoe rack, squeezed the last two sticks of explosive, and grabbed the bolts before throwing himself back.

Thump-thump, a final heartbeat in his chest, sneakers stuffed onto his feet, and Kid went for the loose bar. He tore it free, bolts clattering on the floor, and smashed the tiny window to shards. A quick rattle around the edges got rid of what little clung to the frame, and Kid yanked Conan up off the ground and shoved him through.

Behind him, the door banged, steel screeching across the concrete floor. No time for drama, for quips or for tips of the imaginary hat- Kid slithered through the window and tumbled to the ground, landing in another crouch.

Conan had his top off already, clambering onto Kid's back as if they'd rehearsed it, knotting the shirt around himself and Kid even as Kid sprang into a run.

Ten seconds later, the shadows of an alley engulfed them, and they settled in for a long, painful run into the night.

Kid took the first chance he got to get off the ground, away from the streets where the unencumbered guards could catch them. Post box, street sign, decorative ledge, scramble up a blank wall and twist; Conan's body thumped against Kid's back as he vaulted the corner of the building. His muscles were burning already, Conan far heavier than even his fullest work suit, the weight positioned all wrong- he was overcorrecting for the momentum, he knew, even as he darted across a telephone wire and leapt the dangerous connecting braces at its pole.

Shadows ran across a pool of light on the other side of the street, but Kid was already leaping to a window ledge on an even higher building, pulling up and up...

Kid reached the top and hauled, landing on all fours with a view of the sprawling skyline just off to the right. A skyline that he _knew_; they were in southeastern Tokyo, very near the coast, and the nearest stashed recon glider should be at the top of a factory spout a kilometer to the west.

"Just a little longer," he murmured, as much to himself as to his passenger. Thin limbs tightened almost imperceptibly around Kid's shoulders and hips, even as running footsteps in the street below sent one more spike of adrenaline thrumming through his heart. One hand cupped over the knot at his waist, the knot holding Conan on, and Kid surged forward. _Just a little longer._

Vault over the edge of the building. Catch the bulbous lip of a buzzing neon bar sign, one-two thumps between his feet, heat nipping at his fingertips as he slid down. Tap lightly onto a streetlight arching over the road, one-two-three and leap. More heat, under his palms and along his front this time, stretching to reach the anchoring bars of a second sign, fire-red and blazing still for second-shift drinkers. Climb.

From the top of this building, it was a straight shot west to the factory, buildings packed together with little more than an alley between them. He slung Conan around to his front and ran, now able to jump down the differing roof levels and roll out the followthrough, curled up protectively around his brother. He leapfrogged over a security camera, one hand twisting its face uselessly to the concrete on automatic.

Finally, finally, the rooftops gave way to a simple encircling access road, a line of trucks trundling their way through in the first flurries of third shift. Kid sprang for the one right there, landing with a resounding, reverberating _ker-thud_ and stumbling to one knee. Tires screeched, sending Kid lurching to the other side.

_No. Not yet. _ He couldn't fall here!

He shoved up and forward again, the truck roof swaying underfoot, as shouts started to go up. Straight ahead, against the factory wall, were fire stairs. Jumping onto the bottom landing, metal clanging, Kid ran. Up and around one story, yanking at the knot of Conan's shirt. Up and around a second, and Conan's feet hit the stairs, his hand back in Kid's. Up and around a third, and Kid shoved Conan ahead of him onto the roof, at the bare rungs hammered into the factory chimney.

"Climb!"

Conan didn't even waste a second on an incredulous look, grabbing the ladder and jerking himself up. Kid swung into place behind him, body poised to catch Conan if his too-small hands slipped or if he missed a rung in his haste. But Conan managed not to lose his grip, even going two rungs at a time sometimes, and they reached the smoke-hidden catwalk near the top in minutes.

Kid kicked the mesh trapdoor closed behind them, crouching low to crabwalk around the tower. One... two...

"Now what?" Conan called out, voice fierce and tight.

Three... fourth square. Kid stuck his head out over the four-story drop, heedless of the wind billowing white steam into his face, and then stretched further to reach under the catwalk. Kicking his legs up over the handrail, he stretched just that bit further, and got a grip on cold metal and cloth wedged in the supposedly-inaccessible corner of a support beam. "Gotcha," he hissed, pulling it out and folding himself back up onto the surface.

Conan stepped up next to him, shrugging back into his shirt. "Kaito...?"

The black glider snapped open in Kid's hands. He grinned, only half in relief. "Wanna ride?"

"Yes."

Kid promptly slid under the glider, snapping the loops around his body. "No time to check the safety," he warned. Although, gods, he'd almost rather go splat than return to Grandfa- to that. They'd make damn sure to break him before ever letting him loose again. Drugs came to mind. As did torture. And then he'd go out and _kill_...

Conan plopped into his lap, snapping more of the straps - usually for less animate luggage - around himself. "You're Kid. Fuck the rules."

Kaito nearly choked. So succinct. "Right," Kaito agreed, feeling a smile stretch across his face. "Fuck the rules."

And with that, he leapt into the night sky.

-0-0-0

_Gone_.

Koln listened to his rather panicky subordinate with half an ear, the plastic handset creaking in his grip, mind already shuffling through strategies. It was obviously Vermouth, playing her goddamn secrets-make-a-woman games, who'd smuggled in the materials for the boys to escape with. No one else would dare. Not that it made any difference whether or not she'd done it, or how, since he couldn't just go up and shoot the bitch properly, not the way the boss favored her.

Besides, maybe she'd done him a favor. Not through any fault of her own, but obviously his treatment of them had been... lenient. As had his security precautions. Which did bode well for their value once he'd broken them to the Syndicate's will, but first... he had to get them back.

Hm. So he needed maximum manpower to find the brats, the ability to completely ruin Kaito's life so he couldn't return or find help, and a convenient method of recapturing both boys once they'd been caught.

Well. Kid was a wanted criminal anyway... and small children were taught to trust the police.

"Shut up," he finally said, the underling's voice cutting off mid-word. "This is what you're going to do..."

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

Warnings, disclaimers, squee, Thirty Xanatos Pileup (except it's really only four...)

* * *

Pts. 26-30

Ow.

Saguru opened his eyes to a dimmed and unfamiliar room, the sickening heat of his fractured bone throbbing in his shoulder and radiating down into his nauseated stomach. Ugh. Painkillers had worn off in his sleep. Where on earth was he...?

The mattress was pressing firmly up against his left side, much like a... a couch. Ah. He was on a couch. In... in... (a line of softly-glowing windows up above, indistinct shadows of writing across them, "yer pupils are huge... guess we don't got til morning to talk to the girls") ... a girl's home. Edogawa's girl's home. The Mouri Detective Agency. Ah.

Slowly, carefully, Saguru moved his head, wincing. There was a glass of water and two pills on a tiny plate set on the coffee table next to him. Thank god. He took them with somewhat impolite haste, but it wasn't as if anyone was there to observe him gulping the water down. The only breathing in the room other than his own was slow and steady, deeply asleep on the far side of the table, two figures curled up on a futon wedged between the table and wall.

Hattori and another girl, not-Mouri. He seemed to recall a high-pitched voice with an Osaka accent, so perhaps a friend of his. Girlfriend, perhaps? They _were _sharing a futon...

... wait. If they were here, and he was here, who was with Mouri-san?

Saguru pushed himself painfully to his feet, wobbling slightly before he gained his balance. He allowed himself only a twinge of embarrassment for his state of dress - still wearing the clothing from the day before, wrinkled beyond all hope of repair without a full laundering, his jaw itching with faint stubble - as he made his way gingerly out the door and down the stairs. He could hear quiet sounds from inside the agency proper once he reached the landing, and he quickly combed a hand through his hair in hopes of making it look halfway presentable, then knocked.

What little sound there was in the room came to a halt. Then footsteps approached, padding at some speed towards the door. A pause, one more footfall - a tap of shoes this time - and the door opened to an unfamiliar man's face. Not the famed Sleeping Kogoro, but a shorter, stouter man within the same age range, wearing a fedora despite being indoors. "Who are you?" he asked gruffly.

"Hakuba Saguru," Saguru replied, far too aware of his disheveled appearance. At least a spark of recognition flashed in the man's eyes, the dubious look fading just a bit, so Saguru added, "Is Mouri-san in? Mouri Ran, I mean," he clarified quickly. "Her friends were asleep when I woke, so I became concerned."

The man huffed a bit. "She's here."

"May I...?" Saguru shifted a bit towards the door, then glanced at the stairs upwards. "I do not believe I could sleep further, anyway." Not with only officers about. As Hattori had said, they'd 'dropped the ball' unforgiveably.

A grumble, but the man stepped aside, allowing Saguru into the agency proper. The line of windows he'd seen the night before stretched across the far end of the room, kanji stenciled starkly upon them. A few people were scattered about - Ran at the desk, staring red-eyed at the police-issue tracer-recorder-speakerphone hooked into the agency ground line; her father, hard-faced next to an overflowing ash tray in the corner near a cracked-open window; two officers sitting at a table strewn with notes and files; and the stout man, who was probably a high-ranking officer, most likely the team leader. Saguru would guess that the pair at the table were the lowest-ranked, and the rest of the team were out investigating.

Saguru placed his hand questioningly on one of the two chairs remaining at the table, and recieved a go-ahead nod from the officer on the left. So, with some effort, he pulled the chair over to Ran and carefully - ow, damned shoulder - sat.

"Mouri-san?" he asked quietly.

A moment passed before she reacted, eyes blinking rapidly - blinking tears away to hide them - as she turned her head infinitesimally to look at him. "... You're... you came with Hattori-kun."

"Yes, though we weren't in any state to be introduced properly. Hakuba Saguru."

"... You wanted to borrow Conan-kun."

In the corner of Saguru's vision, he saw the officers tense at that. "I thought he could assist me with some busywork," he replied neutrally. "He's a rather skilled young detective."

That earned him a wobbly little smile, tears brimming in her eyes again. "He is, isn't he. He just... he... helps Dad, runs errands for his cases..." Saguru distinctly heard a grumble of '_little brat_' from said detective's smoky corner, but Ran didn't seem to notice. "He just... he always seems to forget how _little_ he is..."

_Because he's Kudou Shinichi,_ Saguru thought, _and used to being seventeen years old._ "I admit I have little experience with them, but is that not typical of children?" She stared at him. "... er, I apologize? Again. I suppose that was unsympathic of me?"

"No. You're right. It's just... this whole situation..." In her lap, her fists clenched. "Whoever t-took him..."

Footsteps pounded on the stairs. Saguru jerked his head around, just as a young, stocky officer slammed the door open, a red-taped office file in one hand. "Megure-keibu!" The man with the hat came to attention like a dog on a leash. "We have a lead!"

Saguru felt his heart skip a beat, even as Ran gasped. _This is it._

_When the boys escape,_ Kudou Yuusaku had said, _the first thing the Syndicate will do... is try to get them back._

The file folder landed on the desk, the new officer flipping it open to a fuzzy, black-and-white image clearly taken from a security camera. An anonymous convenience store somewhere, two figures - a man and a boy - alone in the aisle. Despite the lack of glasses, the boy was unmistakably Edogawa. But the man...

"Shinichi," Ran choked out, trembling fingers landing on the picture's white border. "How...?"

_They WILL use the police._

Saguru swallowed. "Mouri-san... I'm sorry, but... that can't be Kudou Shinichi." _ Hattori-kun, Hakuba-san, when Ran identifies Shinichi... you're going to play into the Syndicate's hands. _"Because that's one of my missing classmates."

"WHAT?" Saguru managed not to flinch at the chorused shouts, though he stiffened at Megure's added, "Hakuba-san, I'm afraid I know Kudou-kun as well, and that is clearly him."

Saguru shook his head. "And I know Kuroba-kun, and I can prove that it is just as clearly him instead. If I may get my coat from upstairs...?"

Megure frowned, then jerked his head at the officer who'd brought the file. "Chiba-keiji, go with him."

Chiba nodded sharply, stern-faced, then stepped back outside, oh-so-coincidentally blocking any escape to the street, and gestured for Saguru to proceed him upstairs. The agency door shut behind them with a very final click.

Saguru ignored the weight of suspicion that had settled squarely on his shoulders, simply lumbering up the stairs to re-enter the home. He opened the door with little consideration for the occupants sleeping within, then stepped inside and flicked on the lights.

"Nnf?" Hattori mumbled into the girl's neck, eliciting a grumble from her, before he rolled onto his back and flinched. Good. Saguru had managed to wake the one he needed. "Ow. Lights... the fuck?" He sat up as Saguru turned away to hunt in the coat closet. "Chiba-keiji? The fuck's going on?"

"We've got a lead," the man answered. Hattori bolted up on the futon, a strangled little sound, as Chiba continued, "There's some question about the man's identity, though."

"_Some question?"_ Movement, not so much seen as sensed, and Hattori had Chiba sufficiently distracted for the key part of this act to go unnoticed. Saguru reached into the pocket that held his wallet... and with his thumb and forefinger, fumbled open a hard-sided condom case. Behind the condoms (ugh, he would never get the mental image of Haibara-san filling the case and handing it to him with that amused little smirk), his fingertips brushed over the flat plastic of a stick-on transmitter. One press, and he clicked the case closed again, knowing that a discreet alarm was buzzing on the underside of Kudou Yuusaku's watch right about now.

Wallet fetched, he opened it and turned to Chiba, the telltale picture - himself, Aoko, and Kuroba with a handful of snow - on display. "Is this not the man from the security footage?"

Chiba's eyes went wide. "... It is."

A dark hand snatched the wallet from Saguru's grip. "Ain't this the guy you were lookin' for?" Hattori asked.

Saguru let his eyes drop in acknowledgement. "Kuroba Kaito." He allowed himself a small smile, well aware that his next words would provide an opportunity for Hattori to put his acting skills to use. "If he truly has Edogawa-kun, my mind is relieved."

Sure enough: "_WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY?"_

Saguru stared into furious green eyes, and purposely did not flip Hattori flat on his face. "That I'm _relieved_, Hattori-san," he hissed out, past the Osakan's choking grip on his collar. "Kuroba-kun may be a nuisance and a clown, but I cannot believe he would _ever _harm a child."

"And didja ever believe he'd kidnap one?" Hattori snapped.

"... No."

Hattori threw him back against the closet door, and grabbed the wallet up off the ground where it had fallen. "Then I ain't so sure you ever knew this jerk at all. You can come getcher wallet on the way out."

The door slammed closed behind him.

-0-0-0

Heiji flipped open the wallet on his way down the stairs, growling under his breath at the image that'd burned itself into his memory already. Giggling girl, bug-eyed Hakuba, open-faced and brightly laughing Kudou-twin. A low, heartfelt curse kept up the illusion of being completely ticked off, and let out some of the tension from the dangers looming if Heiji failed.

Getting Kuroba's name into the investigation as a suspect felt like crap. But it was a lot better than what would happen if the Syndicate got impatient about cutting off Kuroba's escape routes. A few cops catch bullets, the Nakamori girl trips in front of a train, and suddenly Kuroba would have no one left to help.

Not on Heiji's watch.

Shouldering open the door, he stormed past Megure and Takagi, tossing the wallet down next to the file, on the side not occupied by a photo album. It took only the barest glance at the Mouri's pictures for Heiji to whistle. "Guy's a dead ringer." _Bad _choice of words. Heiji stifled a shudder, watching Ran's fingertips slowly angle the wallet towards her.

"It can't be..." she murmured. Under her other hand, the desk creaked in protest. "All this time..."

...whoashit. Heiji knew that tone. That was the same tone Kazuha used when someone was about to get an introduction to aikido. Facefirst.

"_All this time_," Ran repeated, "that Shinichi's been on a case... he's been in _Ekoda_?"

"I dunno," Heiji answered, staying well out of range of her fists. "I know his mom's some sort of god on the stage, but is he that good to go undercover like _this_," one finger tapped at the gleeful twin in the wallet shot, "and stay that way? For months? 'Coz Hakuba bitched about that guy enough yesterday that if it's Kudou, he is _so_ in the wrong line of work."

A second hand intruded, Megure pulling the wallet from Ran's white-knuckled grip to get a look for himself. The man exhaled, long and slow and seething, through his nose, then barked out, "Takagi!"

"Sir!"

"Go bring Hakuba-kun down here." Takagi darted out the door, an automatic 'sir!' floating in his wake, and Megure turned to Heiji. "As for you. Any information you might have."

"Don't know a lot," Heiji answered coolly, unsurprised. "Kuroba Kaito, class 2B Ekoda High, last seen by Hakuba Saguru at ground zero of that bombing Friday morning, got taken unconscious from the scene by paramedics, ain't been seen since. Age seventeen, certified genius, class clown, magician, pickpocket... though he ain't stolen a cent, just checks the time with other people's watches and stuff. Most recent prank was swappin' the boys' and girls' school uniforms while everyone was still wearin' 'em. Dad's dead, mom wasn't answerin' Hakuba's calls last night."

"Hm. Did Hakuba-san seem to find that odd?"

Heiji shrugged. "Well, yea-"

The phone rang. Instantly, everyone in the room froze, tense stares landing on the handset sitting innocuously in its high-tech cradle. Megure's eyes met Ran's as he bent to the switches, one hand settling on them as the other marked a countdown.

The phone rang again.

Three. Two. One. Ran lifted the phone in the same instant that Megure flipped the switches, triggering the tracing program, recorder, and speakerphone all at once. He nodded her cue, and Ran brought the handset to her ear.

"Mouri Detective Agency."

A crackle of static, then a heavily-mechanized voice said, "_Tell that bitch to make the trade_." Heiji went cold. Even knowing it was some contact of the Kudous', even knowing that this was being done to eliminate some of the worse possibilities from the police profile, to keep Kuroba from being shot on sight... the demand was chilling. Heiji wasn't sure he'd want to be in Ran's place right now.

A resounding crack broke through his nausea, the desk crumpling in on itself under Ran's fist. "Who are you?" she snarled into the reciever. "Tell who? What trade?"

"_Tell that bitch to make the trade,_" the voice repeated,_ "or the boy dies._" Ran jerked as if she'd just been hit with a bucket of ice water, and the voice added,_ "Slowly._" The line went dead.

Silence. Megure glanced needlessly towards the last officer in the room, getting a solemn headshake - the call had been much too short to get any sort of trace on it. Heiji wasn't sure it had been long enough to even narrow it down to Japan.

Slowly, with measured movements, Ran settled the handset back into the cradle, her eyes steely as they tracked across the room. "That," she said, low and quiet, "was no class clown."

-0-0-0

They'd landed in an unfamilar suburb shortly before dawn, coming down hard in a windowless alleyway barely wide enough for the glider. Conan rubbed the feeling back into his feet and calves as Kaito collapsed the glider frame, eyes searching in vain for threats. (He knew in his gut that there couldn't be any security cameras, not since Kaito had chosen to land here, but that made his own instincts scream about killers and rapists. Far worse criminals than Kid loved the same forgotten spots of the world.)

A loud, metallic scraping snapped Conan's attention back to Kaito, to the manhole cover he'd eased to the side. "Quickly now," Kaito said, and Conan caught his hand and let himself be dropped to splash in the muck of the catch basin underneath. Kaito followed, pulling the manhole cover back in place, then gave a cursory glance at the base of the walls.

Conan stepped over to the round pipe in the corner before Kaito had even finished his glance. It was the only way to go, after all: deeper into the drain system. He let Kaito go first, though, the taller boy crawling through rotting leaves and loose trash without a flinch, like the whole place wasn't a deathtrap of broken bottles and rusty nails.

It could, after all, always be worse, Conan thought as he ducked to follow. The storm drains could be part of the sewer system.

A couple of sharp, tight turns in the pipe, and it opened up in a wider tunnel that disappeared into the dark on either side. Water ran in a fairly shallow stream down the center of the floor, not deep enough to do more than eddy around pile of leafy gunk at the base of their entry pipe, flowing gently to the right.

Kaito turned to follow the stream, and began walking.

They walked for hours. Conan's eyes adjusted quickly to the lack of light, faintly reflected through the round catchbasin ducts in the wall, pulsing with the shadows of hundreds of walking feet and all the sounds of a city in full swing. It all melded into one low, barely audible rumble: cars, footsteps, conversation, trains...

The tunnel occasionally forked, merging with others. Kaito didn't hesitate at any of them: downstream, downstream, downstream, upstream, downstream, upstream again... it took until Conan's stomach was rumbling again before he noticed the tiny chalk marks high in the corners.

"And here we thought you preferred the sky to travel."

"Mm. I do," Kaito replied neutrally. He didn't elaborate, though, and they fell silent again.

Three turns after that, Conan still hadn't figured out half the symbols Kaito was navigating by, but the one Kaito was actually following was all the same one: a set of parentheses overlapping each other, looking rather like a modified X.

Another six turns, and the symbol changed. The new marks at this fork were faded, older, and Kaito didn't give them so much as a glance as he strolled into the left fork. Although his body language didn't change, Conan got a sense of... not quite relief, or anticipation, but both of them tempered with the slightest hint of wariness. As if they were almost to their destination.

As if Kaito wasn't entirely sure what he'd find when they got there.

Except... He wasn't stupid enough to be taking them anywhere Koln would have staked out. Unless Koln figured they wouldn't be dumb enough to return to their homes or something, and therefore hadn't staked those places out, and Kaito was therefore going home...? Except that Koln would guess that they might figure that out, and have the places staked out just in case...?

So no. Kaito wouldn't risk it. But then, where were they going and why was Kaito nervous about going there?

... If there was an over-18 rule that Kaito planned to fast-talk their way past, Conan was going to kick him.

The next fork branched in three, and at long last, Kaito hesitated. Conan peered up around him at the tiny marks on the ceiling. The rightmost drain had a tree, or perhaps a stick of cotton candy. Straight ahead, the drain was marked with a crosshatched number sign. And to the left, there was a triangle. (The way back, which Conan almost didn't check, had a sign he finally recognized: the map symbol for "school".)

Kaito seemed almost to brace himself, the familiar manic grin unveiling itself upon his face, and he took the leftmost, triangle-marked path.

This section of the pipe was short, ending in a high-ceilinged, multi-pipe room with a narrow ledge spiraling up the righthand wall. Conan slipped more than once on the muck as he preceded Kaito up the ledge, but he caught himself easily enough on the rough wall, and it wasn't as if a fall from even the top of the ledge just two meters up would hurt that much. Not with the layer of leaf mulch pressed into the floor.

At the top of the ledge, the path made a hairpin turn into another short section of pipe, this one barrel-vaulted and low enough that Kaito had to duck, and came out into another high-ceilinged room. They repeated the short-path-and-switchback one more time - they must be under a hill - then, at the top of the third ledge, Kaito tapped Conan's shoulder and tipped his head towards a pipe trickling water into the vaulted room, just out of arms' reach.

The grin flickered into something slightly more genuine. "Nobody tosses a dwarf?" Kaito quoted, making Conan groan. But he gamely held out his hands anyway.

It wasn't a toss, really. Kaito simply lifted him out over the gap, and with the extra reach Conan himself provided, Conan grabbed onto the ledge and slithered in easily. He rolled out of the way, Kaito following with little more than a small jump, and they continued upstream.

Six more of the little, light-and-sound-entry pipes passed, then the seventh had the same tiny triangle mark fading into the ceiling above it. They crawled through a somewhat thicker mat of leaves this time, one that was almost devoid of plastic wrappers but did have quite a few bedraggled, muddy feathers, and emerged into a catch basin that was almost bright with shafts of light coming through the holes in its manhole cover up above.

Conan took a shaky breath. They'd made it. Wherever 'it' was. Wherever Kaito was slightly nervous about being at.

Kaito stretched up on his tiptoes, got both palms against the cover, and paused. "You're not asking where we are."

No. No, he wasn't. "Exactly how many options do you have?"

"... Just this one. Unless you want to risk that my boltholes haven't been compromised and emptied. Koln found me, after all."

"Well, I don't have any at all." Conan crossed his arms and met Kaito's eyes boldly. _So please be right._

Kaito's head tipped ever-so-slightly, then turned away. He pressed up, metal scraping loudly against concrete, but he ignored the noise, hopping a few times to get the plate fully off the hole. Sunlight streamed into the hole, bright and warm. Conan blinked a few times, until the painful blur up above resolved itself into a blue sky patched over with trees, vibrant leaves almost neon after the days they'd spent in dark concrete.

"Here," Kaito said, crouching down. Conan scrambled up onto his shoulders, and Kaito - with a careful, judging glance up at the sky - stood. Conan's head popped out into some sort of park, all trees and grass and a black-suited man who looked like he'd come right out of Frankenstein's lab. Heavy-lidded eyes in a sallow, too-broad face blinked rapidly at Conan, then crinkled in an unmistakably hungry leer, which showed yellowed, uneven teeth.

"We've been expecting you."

Conan jerked, barely stifling a scream. Catching himself on the lip of the manhole, one foot scythed up, the other kicked back at Kaito to get that much more momentum, and - with a startled yelp still echoing below - Conan's heel smacked directly into the man's jaw, snapping his head back and sending the man sprawling flat on his hunched back.

"Conan!" Kaito yanked himself up, half-pushing Conan aside to get the room to see. "Conan- oh..." Then, much to Conan's shock, instead of running or attacking, Kaito half-slumped onto the concrete slab. "Crap. I should've known she'd be expecting us."

"Who- what-" Conan's eyes snapped from Kaito back to the hunchback, then to Kaito again. "That's a- that's not a woman-"

"No, that's her butler," Kaito explained, as the man sat up, rubbing his muddy chin.

"Excellent followthrough, young master," he told Conan, the leer showing even more teeth now. "If you will please follow me, my lady has baths and suitable clothing waiting."

Conan instantly felt every scrape and trace of muck, from his dripping head to his squishing shoes, demanding attention and making his skin crawl. However, his instincts screamed even more loudly, and he caught at Kaito's soaked cuff even as the taller boy practically levitated himself out of the manhole. "_Kaito_!" he hissed, getting a half-unfeigned glance of complete incomprehension. Conan tugged more insistently, and Kaito obediently crouched. "_How did she know about me?"_

That some woman could hope she'd be Kaito's last port in the proverbial storm, and be waiting for him with all the necessities, Conan could believe. But to know Conan was coming as well... there weren't nearly so many ways of knowing that. And every single one led right back to Koln and the Syndicate...

Kaito grinned. "Magic."

... except the possibility that there had been security cameras hidden in the storm drain that Kaito hadn't told him about. Which, at least, was in line with people paranoid enough for Kaitou Kid to claim as a final safe house.

"... Kaito? Your friends are _weird._"

The house the butler led them up to - for it turned out that the storm drain had been deep in the forested backyard of a home that might even be larger than his own - didn't sway Conan's opinion one bit. Gothic-style, with what looked like at least twenty years of deferred maintenance, it best resembled an American haunted house and suited the butler perfectly.

A brass cobra knocker on the door didn't seem to have any pinprick lenses in it, but looks could be deceiving. Likewise, the threadbare and dingy Turkish rugs, the heavy mahogany work, the tarnished brass sconces with half their lightbulbs burnt out, they could all be hiding extensive security technology. It would explain where the household money was going, after taxes at least.

Conan trotted to keep up, trying not to drip on the old carpets running up the stairs and down the center of the hall. The butler stopped at a door halfway down, opening it and bowing. "The bath, sirs. Please call if you require anything." Conan darted in past Kaito's legs, the other boy seeming not to notice until the door fell shut behind them. Kaito's eyes landed on him, the faintest flicker of - surprise? Conan wasn't sure - flashing through them before Kid's smooth expression reappeared.

"I would have thought you'd prefer to bathe alone," Kaito remarked.

Arrrgh. "_I don't know who these people are_." And Kaito did. And he was pulling away- had been since they'd entered the storm drains, really, but he'd been slipping straight into the Kid mask since they'd caught sight of the house.

It shouldn't have been so damn nervewracking, except that... well. Koln. He'd known what he was doing; Stockholm Syndrome had already been setting in, sliding its insidious little hooks into their psyches. And even though Kaito might be back to something familiar...

Conan was not.

"Ah." The mask slipped. "We're at the home of a classmate of mine. Koizumi Akako." Kaito's smile quirked lopsided. "She's a witch."

Okay, Wiccan, or teen rebellion Goth, or something. Conan could work with that. But... "A classmate?" Didn't he think Koln would be _watching _all of them?

"One I'm known to be wary of," Kaito added. "Not like Hakuba. I tease him, I avoid her." Thwap went the wet trousers, and Kaito settled himself on the bathing stool and started running water. "It's a long story, and not one that's mine to tell... nor one that paints its star in a flattering light. She _will _help us, though." He stuck his head under the spout, and the rushing water made his last words almost unintelligible. "What I'm worried about is the price."

The price? Conan shucked his own clothes, dumping them atop Kaito's, and took the showerhead while Kaito soaped up. "She's a witch. You think she'll want some expensive gems to work with?" Wait. Could be a witch with all the wrong ideas. "Or would she prefer a pint of blood?"

Kaito snorted. "Could be, Conan. Could be."

Wait, _what?_ "Seriously?" With Conan's luck...

"No." Kaito scrubbed at his hair. "I don't think she uses human parts in her spells." Taking the showerhead back, he leaned forward to rinse. "I would've sicced you on her ages ago if I suspected she did."

_Gee, thanks_, Conan thought.

Another splash, and Kaito turned, a washcloth politely in his lap. "Turn around, I'll get your back if you get mine?"

Conan nodded, handing over his own washcloth, then turned. Kaito settled one hand firmly on his shoulder, and scrubbed in silence. Then it was Conan's turn, and he soaped up the cloth and went for Kaito's broad back.

His fingertips brushed over a faint ridge under the suds, too giving to be ribs - in the valley between two, actually - and Conan paused. Traced the sensation slowly forward around Kaito's side, a perfectly straight line cutting across ribs and towards the sternum, almost like... like... he almost wanted to say the harness strap. It wasn't a gunshot wound, not like the divot under his thumb...

"I appreciate the hug," Kaito said, voice tight, "but this really isn't the time, Tantei-kun."

Conan jerked back as if stung. And maybe he was, a little... hadn't it been 'Conan' there, for a while? Not 'Tantei-kun'? "Your back's done," he said, a little colder than he meant to. One final rinse, and he looped one towel around his body, pulling a second over his head to dry his hair.

Behind him, Kaito sighed. "I crashed into a weathervane, all right?"

Oh. "Sorry. Didn't mean to..." Embarrass him. Or invade his space.

"'S alright."

Clothing. They didn't have time to soak, so. Getting dressed. There were two piles of clothes waiting on a shelf next to the door. Conan took the smaller pile, finding a plain white Tshirt, red button-fly corduroy trousers, and a pair of socks.

... The buttons were on the wrong side of the fly. Girls' clothes. Ugh.

At least the Syndicate couldn't locate them by who'd bought unnecessary boys' clothing recently. Though he was going to be pretty uncomfortable until they smuggled in some underwear.

Conan finished dressing, finger-combed his hair as best he could, then turned to find Kaito dressed as well - not in girl clothes, surprisingly, but familiar white slacks and a blue dress shirt...

"She has a _Kid costume_ lying around?"

Kaito's eyes brightened. "Fashion necessity, wouldn't you say? Very stylish. Every wardrobe should hav-"

A knock on the door interrupted them. "Young sirs?" the butler's voice came. "The mistress awaits you in the parlor."

"'Said the spider to the fly'," Kaito muttered in English. Conan gave him a startled look, getting a quickly-flashed, toothy grin, then Kaito opened the door and beamed at the man. "I'd hate to keep a lady waiting. Shall we?"

An incline of that misshapen head, and the butler turned and led them downstairs, then farther back into the house. Half-open doors gave glimpses of a dining room, kitchen, library... and then he stopped at a door that was closed, golden light flickering out from underneath, and knocked.

"Come in." The voice was female, low and sultry and disturbingly like Ai's. Hopefully, their senses of humor wouldn't be too similar.

... Though as edgy as Kaito had been, Conan wouldn't bet good money on that.

Opening the door, the butler bowed them inside, then vanished back into the depths of the house.

It was warmer in here, a fire crackling in the fireplace, throwing dancing shadows across the same worn-out, heavy Victorian furnishings as the rest of the house. The fire was somewhat necessary, since none of the glass-shaded lamps were on, and thick curtains had been pulled across the windows - not a common occurance, as unfaded lines of vibrant burgundy striping the fabric clearly showed that they'd been tied back for years, perhaps decades.

Two wingback chairs and a scrollback settee huddled up together around a table topped with black marble. Between the chairs was a domed plinth - probably a large globe on a pedestal - covered with a violet cloth. Curled in the wingback nearest the fire, a heavy quilt over her lap, sat a long-haired girl in a loose black dress, its folds skimming lightly over soft curves that- _ack_. Conan pulled his eyes away, focusing solely on her face, which would have probably been fine-featured and model-perfect... had not half of it been one massive, swollen bruise only a few shades darker than her hair.

Beside him, Kaito inhaled sharply. "Akako-hime!" He vanished from Conan's side, down on one knee before the girl, fingertips a hair's breadth from her tipped chin. "What happened?"

The girl smirked, the uninjured side of her mouth tugging upwards wickedly. "Why, Kuroba-kun," she purred. "I do believe that's the most concern you've ever shown for me."

"You've never looked like you were _in a car accident_ before!" Kaito shot back.

Her smirk faded only slightly. "So that's what it takes to get your attention." One slim, manicured hand gestured at the tiny Victorian loveseat across from her. "Sit, sit, introduce me."

Conan did, barely aware that he'd obeyed until the denuded velvet rasped across his scraped hands, but Kaito didn't move. "Akako-hime. What. Happened."

Akako sighed. "Just a little explosion," she answered, falsely nonchalant. "I don't think anyone was killed... Your thrice-cursed ninjas have no restraint." Conan went cold, even as she carelessly went on, "It's an embarrassment to your side of the law. Now, sit," she snapped, before her attention turned to Conan and went cuttingly sweet again. "How do you take your tea, little detective?"

Ninjas. Explosions. Tea. Curves. ... What?

"Western-style requires a touch of cream," Kaito answered smoothly in Conan's place, settling in next to him as the butler reappared, placing a dainty tea tray before them, lily-painted china clattering. "What's this about 'thrice-cursed ninjas'?" His voice sharpened, hovering somewhere around 'knowing'. "Have you been up to something, Akako-hime?"

"Of course." Akako sniffed. "They were doomed to failure the instant they spilled my blood," she accepted a cup from the butler, "so that's one curse. The next two are lined up and waiting for the final... components," she finished, a sly look flickering over Kaito and Conan.

That snapped Conan out of it as surely as a slap in the face. His fingers tightened around his teacup; hot tea in the butler's face, broken china in the girl's, the pot could shatter into a good large weapon... "Components?" he asked sharply.

Wine-red eyes pinned him again, pleasure - not a friendly kind - bright in them. "I'm _so_ glad you asked." One manicured finger lifted to point unerringly at him. "From you, I need justice."

... Justice?

"That blessing - backhanded as it is - that you have for finding the murdered, to speak in their name and lay them to rest." Her eyes hardened. "I _will_ take that from you before I permit you to leave."

Conan stared, completely nonplussed. What the hell was that? Crazy so-called witch...

The pointing finger jerked over to Kaito. "From _you_, Kuroba-kun, I need truth."

Kaito went very, very still. "... Which one?" he asked, low and quiet.

Akako's gaze fell. "The one which will hurt the most," she replied in the same tone, her hand dropping to the covered globe next to her. "I am sorry." And she tugged the cloth away to reveal a crystal ball.

_Seriously?_ Conan thought. The ball was sitting on a stand which clearly showed there were no wires underneath it, and Conan could see the other side of the room at the height he was sitting at. He couldn't help it; he twisted around on the couch and looked up at the crown molding for a projector lens.

Kaito poked him. "Stop looking for the trick," he said absently, all his attention - and worry, it was plain as day to Conan's ears - on the crystal. "It's rude. Akako-hime...?"

"Watch."

-0-0-0

The taxi pulled up before a house that Saguru had never, personally, seen. Small and unassuming, the two-story home was all in white and dark browns: plain white walls studded with frosted windows, a traditional tile roof, an upstairs terrace presumably for the master bedroom. A few evergreen bushes and a small tree filled the garden space. In short, it had nothing to make it stand out among the rest of the homes on the street.

Nothing, except the three police cars parked in front and the open front gate.

Saguru's stomach clenched, but he forced himself to limp up through the gate and garden. The door was open as well, the shadowy shape of a uniformed officer crouching in the genkan, shoulders deep in the shoe cubby.

There were several pairs of women's heels and scuffed sneakers piled up beside him, none of them police-issue. Saguru swallowed - _my fault_ - and edged carefully past the man.

The hallway was empty, though Saguru could see and hear the men in the actual rooms of the house. This space was dominated by a half-length portrait on the wall under the stairwell, of an auburn-haired woman in a white satin dress straight from classic Hollywood. The amusement shining in her eyes clearly marked her as Kuroba-kun's mother, Chikage, but otherwise, there was understandably little resemblence.

So that was one.

A familiar silhouette stormed across the hallway, there and gone in an instant. Saguru hobbled quickly towards the room the other man had vanished into, finding him in the kitchen, standing like a dragon who'd not yet picked a target to smite. The current object of his wrath looked to be the rice all over the floor, a thick sweeping spray from a storage bin that had apparently rolled off the counter.

... _Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant_, Saguru thought, and quietly backed out of the doorway. Discretion was the better part of valor, and all that.

Across the hallway, a sliding door stood open on a living room. A safe hung open over a comfortable couch currently sporting one kneeling officer and a landscape painting, the officer dusting the safe door for prints. The painting, Saguru presumed, had hidden the safe.

Before the couch was a kotatsu, another officer shining a flashlight underneath. And perpendicular to the couch and kotatsu, a television cabinet sat underneath another portrait. This one was of the full family: the famous Toichi in a sober dark suit, Chikage in vibrant leaf green, and a giggling two-year-old Kaito in a sailor suit on her lap.

Two downstairs, two up, Saguru remembered. A quick check of the rest of the downstairs - a toilet and a tatami room, which Saguru didn't dare enter with his dirty socks, much less his shoes - revealed no more signs of any disturbance. So he headed upstairs.

There were three officers packed into Kaito's room. They'd stripped the bed, overturned the mattress, emptied the dresser of drawers, flipped the rug; police tossed a home as thoroughly as any professional non-Kaitou-Kid thief. But it looked like they hadn't yet gotten to the full-length portrait of Toichi onstage, hung brazenly on the single span of empty wall between the bed and window.

It would be too obvious if Saguru attempted to fit inside the room with the other officers - his shoulder throbbed angrily at the thought - so he turned away. The next two doors stood open on a bath and another closet-like toilet, respectively, then the last door opened to the master bedroom.

Saguru's first thought was that this room had been tossed already, too. But the mattress was still straight on the bedframe. The bed, though, was unmade, covers and pillows spilling off one side, mixing with a trail of discarded clothing that curled around the bed and puddled across the closet threshold and under the haphazardly opened dresser drawers.

The fourth portrait hung over the low dresser, Toichi and Chikage in Western-style wedding attire some twenty years out of date. _Less expensive_, Saguru thought, not uncharitably, as he frowned up at the happy couple.

_I am so sorry._

One of the officers, probably one of the ones in Kaito's room at this very moment, had to be carrying evidence to plant. A mole in the Ekoda police... perhaps even one in the Task Force. There was no knowing who. No knowing if the man would excuse himself to 'assist' Saguru, or just to watch him... so the performance couldn't slip.

Saguru looked around the room once again, slowly - _it's all evidence. Deduce like it's a fresh case, like you don't actually know what the secret is_. The clothing strewn over the floor was in a wide range of styles and colors. Reds, yellows, the same leaf-green from the downstairs picture, several shades of pale purples, silver and gold. _Noticeable colors._ There was a notable lack of undergarments. Two pairs of jeans lay half-buried under the bedsheets.

Jeans didn't pack well. They were too thick and stiff, and far too casual to go unnoticed on a woman of Chikage's age in Japan. Combined with the open safe and ignored electronics, the unlabeled rice tin that was a popular spot to hide emergency funds in, that screamed of familiarity with the house and no interest in items for pawning. So she'd obviously made a run for it. But why?

And why were there such expensive painted portraits, rather than photographs, in this house? Everything else - the size of the house, the choice of wedding, the inexpensive furnishings, the ordinary school that Saguru himself went to - indicated a budget much more sensible than that.

Why had the downstairs safe needed a dull landscape to cover it? It should have fit easily behind the family portrait. Unless there was no space...

Saguru whirled and crouched, eyeing the dresser leg. There were small, flat disks of blackened metal at the very base. Aha. The dresser had been nailed in place. Which meant that it was supposed to be used for something, but it was too heavy to use as a trapdoor handle. So if you couldn't go down... you had to use it to go _up_. Stepstool. And if you used the dresser as a stepstool...

Slowly, Saguru dragged his eyes back up to the wedding picture. Door. One of four inside the house. That toilet room right behind this wall had looked awfully shallow, hadn't it.

It was the work of a moment to pull on latex gloves and climb up onto the dresser, pressing his fingertips lightly, testingly, against the polished frame. There were a few tiny dents in the edge, sensed more easily via touch than sight, but none of them gave under pressure. The frame was metal, too, so there weren't any knots to mark a catch. If the doors had been made less than fifteen years ago, they would've probably included a later image of Kaito, which meant there wouldn't be any fingerprint or capacitive sensor locks requiring a bare hand to activate the door.

Hm.

Pulling a receipt from his pocket, Saguru traced the corner along the nearly imperceptible crack between wall and frame. The paper jammed against the metal when he attempted to slide it behind the portrait... but slid in smoothly when he aimed it at the wall. So the painting was set into the wall, not merely against it. That meant it certainly couldn't slide to either side, as was common for interior doors. Therefore, since there was nowhere to get a grip to pull, and no clearance over the dresser's surface for both door and entrant...

Of course. Who would dare touch the frail canvas of an expensive portrait like this?

Saguru settled one gloved hand carefully on the painted bouquet in Chikage's grip, and pushed.

The portrait gave with a little click. Saguru exhaled shakily, and pressed further. The innocent, beaming bride and groom pivoted on their axis and slid out from under his fingertips, revealing a dark, narrow shaft that plunged into the depths of the house. Ladder rungs were cut into the side wall, perfectly clean and dry; evidence that the shaft had been cared for until very recently, perhaps even as recently as Friday.

_Forgive me._

And Saguru turned away, one hand on the obverse side of the portrait - on the Magician in the Moonlight and a woman in horror makeup - took a deep breath, and yelled, "_NAKAMORI-KEIBU!"_

-0-0-0

Kaito sat in a numb silence, dry eyes fixed on the glowing images under Akako's fingertips. Watched in perfect clarity as officers squeezed into his mother's room, as Nakamori shoved to the forefront of the pack. As his best friend's father laid eyes on the hidden painting of Kaitou 1412 and the Phantom Lady, betrayal slapped up onto Nakamori's face.

As his father's secret room filled with stricken officers, one familiar face after another trickling inside. As latex-gloved hands began opening drawers, riffling through things that had gone untouched for eight years, that had only been handled by his father, by himself...

The framed photograph of himself and Shinichi, which Kaito had been keeping on the table next to his favorite chair, was gone, along with the shoebox he'd left beside it. His mother had to have done that, taken the pictures and left the doors unlocked. Why hadn't she locked the doors?

Why had Hakuba opened them?

_Why?_

His breath rasped in his throat, and Kaito swallowed once. Twice. "Ojousan." Kid's voice, light and flat and as detached as he could make it. "Tantei-kun. I believe I will excuse myself now."

Akako inclined her head, her hand falling away from the crystal and letting it go dark. Kaito stood, lightheaded - stand straight, stand casual, Poker Face is not the costume - and shoved his hands nonchalantly in his pockets as he turned to leave.

Without the cape, even at this angle, he could still see Conan shift to face him, the open concern on his face. "Kaito-kun..."

Not now. He couldn't take compassion now. Not when everything had been... _was being_... violated. "Excuse me." And with that, Kaito did-not-hurry from the room and made his escape until dinner.

TBC


	8. Chapter 8

Warnings, disclaimers, mwahaha.

I know, the chapters come pretty slowly. Things have been kinda rough, a lot of old issues got dredged up this past year. I promise I haven't abandoned this fic, though.

Pts. 31-34

_International Criminal #1412 Revealed!_

_Shocking discovery in bomb victim's home!_

_Ekoda, Tokyo - Police seeking a person of interest in a Beika kidnapping were stunned Monday afternoon when they discovered the hideout of International Criminal #1412, Kaitou KID, underneath the Kuroba family home. Multiple entrances within the building have led police to believe that the entire family is involved in the activities of the famous thief._

_The discovery is all the more unsettling for the particulars of the family itself. The widow and teenage son of the world-renowned magician Kuroba Toichi, who died ten years ago in a stage accident, are longstanding friends to Nakamori Ginzo, head of the Kaitou KID Task Force charged with capturing the elusive thief. An internal investigation has been opened into Detective Nakamori's career..._

Click.

"Clearly," the pundit on Japan Today said, "today's youth are being left to their own devices far too much. The current administration's insistance on scaling back school hours to match the low expectations other nations have in their children-"

Click.

Nichiuri Night Talk's early morning rerun had a round table in progress. "I think," the economist was saying, "we need to be asking why a high school student has been running rings around entire divisions of the police for the past seventeen months. Mere genius cannot explain how one child could consistently outsmart hundreds of fully trained officers of the law-"

Click.

A notable American profiler was on Fuji News, a full day's stubble on his face and subtitles failing to distract from his sharp gaze. "It's a proven fact that criminals escalate the longer they go uncaught. The whole world's been waiting for Kaitou Kid to finally tip past that point, and now he-"

Conan turned off the television with a bit more violence than the remote really deserved, and sighed. If Koizumi Akako had any mercy, Kaito would be housed in a guest room without a television. Which, if Conan's ability to read suspects was any good, meant that Kaito probably had a big-screen plasma with full satellite at his fingertips.

Not that he could make heads or tails of Koizumi's motives yet. Perhaps it was just too early to tell. Perhaps she had sadistic tendencies. Perhaps she actually believed all that witchcraft stuff she'd been spouting.

The door to Conan's room opened without so much as a knock. "Ohayou, Conan-kun!" the woman herself chirped in wicked glee, perched lightly in her butler's arms. Her side-slit skirt hung open all the way... up... to...

Bare hip. No strap. Meaning if the thin fabric got caught on something or moved the wrong way...

Conan felt his eyes cross.

Several dazed minutes later, Conan found himself trotting obediently along a hallway behind the butler, Koizumi almost completely blocked from his sight. All he could see of the woman was the cast on her ankle, and the cobra-motif headdress weighing heavily on her bandaged head. It looked extremely painful and couldn't be medically advised.

A few more steps, and Conan realized that at some point (while he was distracted by Koizumi, _why _was he so distracted by Koizumi) they'd come downstairs and were nearly to the back of the house.

Correction, he thought, as they walked through an open door, they _were _at the back of the house. The very last room in the hallway looked as if it had once been a solarium, or perhaps a conservatory, but if there'd ever been plants to take advantage of the glass roof - and, presumably, matching walls behind heavy draperies - there weren't any now. The room held only a chalk pentagram, barely visible in the light of a half-dozen candles and the first blue hints of dawn, and a low tray table at the center.

The butler settled Koizumi carefully down onto the stone floor behind the tray table, eliciting a wince of pain, then bowed and scuttled from the room.

Conan stared hard at the tray table, as if it held the secrets of some exotic case, instead of risking the distraction Koizumi was again. The tray had a rather random collection of small objects on it, as if the witch had grabbed a handful of whatever was on her dresser late last night. Except for the knife. He sincerely hoped that she didn't usually keep a knife on her dresser.

The knife was perhaps nine or ten centimeters long, the entire thing no longer than the blade of a steak knife, but double-bladed rather than serrated. It would be difficult to use it as a murder weapon, though not impossible: slit the throat, stab a main artery, up into the brainpan from the soft points of skull or through the eye or ear...

He really needed people to stop getting killed around him.

The rest of the objects really did look like they'd come off a woman's dresser, at least. There was a heavy, ugly silver locket in some neo-Egyptian Victorian style, a pair of bird-handled sewing scissors from the same era, a human-shaped garnet birthstone charm, a spool of red thread, and a needle.

Koizumi offered the birthstone charm first. "Put this under your tongue."

She has got to be kidding, Conan thought, staring at the little pendant. With a huff, she poked it past his lips and reached for the next item on the tray. A flick of red-taloned nails opened the locket, showing gold plating inside.

"Normally, I'd have you scratch your name and your mother's inside," she told him, teeth gleaming wickedly in a smile more hinted at than seen. "But there's only enough room for two."

Only enough room for...?

She _knew_. Conan very nearly swallowed the birthstone in his mouth. "Wha... uh..." Conan managed to put on his best little-boy grin despite the icy pit in his stomach. "Two names? Like my first and last, right? I dunno, Neechan, my handwriting's pretty big!"

Koizumi smirked. "Two names, as in your own and your alias. Although," she airily flicked a lock of long hair out of the way, "Feel free to write it in code if you want."

"But _Neechan_," Conan added just enough of a whine to sound seven, "I don't _have _an alias."

Her eyes narrowed slightly. Then, "Give me your hand. No, your right hand." She grabbed his wrist and turned his right hand palm-up, one long finger tapping at the deep crease that curved around the base of the thumb. "That's your life line. See how it breaks in two and runs parallel to itself here? That means you use an alias, just like Kuroba-kun. His has a little bit of braiding between the lines, though, since Kid disguises himself so much. You've only got the two."

Conan stared. She had somehow managed to say all that with a straight enough face that... "You expect me to _believe _that?"

"Aw," she gave him a mocking little pout, "don't you trust me?"

"No."

Koizumi's expression didn't change. "It's too bad you're at my mercy, then, isn't it? Fortunately, I don't need your trust for this to work." She let him go, ignoring whatever stricken expression Conan was sure was on his face, and tapped the needle towards him. "Names. Code. Start etching."

Conan took a deep breath and exhaled shakily. Code. Okay. The sooner he humored the crazy witch lady, the sooner he could go find Kaito and throttle out how much the man had told Koizumi. Then, maybe, if he was feeling benevolent instead of _freaked out of his mind_, he could rescue Kid from the television. So. A code, a code... Perhaps he could do something with Japanese Morse. It would be easy enough to write numbers for how many dots and dashes there were in each letter... except how would he mark which started with dots and which with dashes? "Wa" and "na" would end up the same number, 111, since they were just inversions of each other.

... Inversions. Negatives. Of course. Conan started scratching the tiniest numbers he could manage, getting glinting lines of silver in the gold leaf. -113, 214, 114, -111, -4, 111, and 11111 marched down one half of the locket's back, with 31, 214, 21, -2111, 11111, 11, and 211 on the other side.

With the final 1 glinting silver under the tip of the needle, Conan set the locket and needle back onto the tray table... and froze, as Koizumi caught the hair at his temple between her fingers and twisted. Her other hand reached for the tiny knife. "Um..."

"Hold still." The blade slid between her grip and the side of his head, the flat cold against his scalp, and then... It felt oddly like his hair was being torn, or like someone was ripping velcro next to his ear, but Koizumi came away with a small lock wrapped around her fingers. She quickly tied it with a bit of the red thread, then curled it neatly into the locket and picked up the knife again. "Hands out."

"_What_?"

"You can spare four drops, can't you?" Koizumi asked, gesturing with the knife in an unnervingly casual manner.

"Kaito said you didn't use blood," Conan replied, fists hovering protectively near his chest.

That earned him a wry smirk. "I don't go trying to circumvent a god's blessing every day." The knife pointed back at him. "Four drops. It'll barely hurt, I promise."

Barely hurt. Somehow, that assurance - so much more honest than the usual, patronizing this-won't-hurt-a-bit used by doctors and parents the world over - made something deep inside Conan ease a bit. Not that he trusted her. Even if she could've done any damn thing she wanted by now. But she was being almost unbearably honest and apparently relishing the discomfort it induced, the latter of which at least was consistent with what he'd seen of her.

Slowly, Conan held out his hands. Koizumi gripped his left wrist firmly, and the knife flicked lightly across each of the prominent creases at the top of his palm. Her thumb pressed at the fork where the creases met, bright beads of blood welling up in each tiny cut, and she scooped the topmost one up with the tip of the knife. She repeated the gesture with the second drop, then scraped them both on and into the locket. His right hand got the same treatment mirrored upon it, and Koizumi scraped both blood drops into the locket and picked it up.

"Spit."

The charm. Right. Conan leaned forward, opened his mouth, and let the tiny, person-shaped charm fall into the locket. It landed in the curled curve of his hair, garnet almost hiding the dribble of blood, and Koizumi snapped the locket shut under his nose.

"Blood and breath, life and death," she told him with a wink, as she pulled the locket close.

Gee, that didn't sound ominous at _all_. Stupid charlatan mind tricks. He definitely preferred Kid's games to whatever Koizumi was after. Hopefully she was done, now that she was murmuring in a strange language at the locket as if he wasn't even there.

"Can I go now?"

She waved him off, even as some trick of the candlelight and dawn started to shimmer red around her, and he bolted.

He was never letting himself get roped into stupid fake spellwork again. Never.

-0-0-0

_Skreeleet._ Lines of static cut across the television screen, bright white over the fuzzy image of a convenience store, small figures jerking backwards underneath them out and in the door. Heiji lifted his thumb off the rewind button, and let the video play again.

The digital copy would've been more useful. Everybody used digital these days. But even if the Mouri's had a DVD player in the apartment, rather than in the office downstairs that was crawling with police, Heiji wouldn't have used it. The rewind function just didn't work the same way, hopping jerkily from still image to still image instead of smoothly reversing motion as the analog picture did.

Heiji pressed the button again, the small figures of Kudou and Kuroba skittering backwards from the cash register and into the snack aisle. Something was very, very wrong...

Someone pinched his ear.

"OW!"

"Would ya _stop_ that?" Kazuha hissed, grabbing at the remote. "You're upsettin' Ran!"

Heiji twisted away, smacking Kazuha's grip loose and turning the tv to face away from the room. "Everything's upsettin' Neechan," he shot back, in the same low tones. "I ain't gonna ignore a hunch 'coz she's reactin' right." Huddling closer to the video, he rewound it again. "Somethin's just _wrong_ here." And he couldn't tell what it was.

Okay. Ignore Kazuha. Throw out all hypotheses, everything Yuusaku said 'coz he wasn't here to argue it, look at the evidence. Video tape with Kudou-or-Kid and Conan. Ain't Kudou, because duh, Kudou's Conan. So anyone arguin' it's Kudou and Conan, which half the cops were, is wrong or fakin'.

... Fake. What if...

Three possibilities. Tape's real. Kid 'n Conan walk into a convenience store without so much as a hat for disguise, while their faces are bein' plastered all over the news. Kid seriously thinks that a missin' kid, especially one so close to the cops, ain't gonna be all over the airwaves. Yeah. Right.

Tape's fake. The Org got video of Kid 'n Conan somewhere, all undisguised and interactin' and stuff, and wasted a ton of labor and computer time splicin' this with a security tape. Then they handed it off to a mole and got it into the department that way. More likely to be done. Also more likely to get caught.

Tape's real. People on it are fake. Disguise artist and an Org - Heiji felt his skin prickle - and an Org kid. Because some of them had to have kids. It happens even if people weren't trying to be faceless wife-and-two-kids salarymen moles. Hadn't Ai said once that her parents were Org? See, evidence. So a disguise artist like Vermouth and an Org kid go walking around a convenience store in the dead of night, and the tape gets sent in. Bonus, the chain of evidence is unassailable and the Org's cops don't gotta risk their cover. Though there's still gonna be an agent in the investigation just to get Kid and Conan back.

They gotta know there's a mole. They _ain't_ coming back.

Fuck. He'd known that - heard it from the Kudous, discussed it with them, all their plans assumed that the twins weren't dumb enough to come back - but he hadn't _known_ it yet. Not in the way that he'd worked it out for himself instead of relying on someone else's conclusions.

There wasn't fucking time to cry over it. He could still do something. Like get a look at the reports the tape came with, who were the witnesses and who'd taken the statement and shit. Yeah. Way to put a big fat target on his back, there.

"-ji? _Heiji!_ I toldja to quit watchin' that thing!" And with a decisive click, Kazuha turned the tv off and pulled the plug.

"Hey!"

"You insensitive jerk!" She brandished a fist. "If I were Ran I'd've put yer head through a wall by now!"

"Neechan can speak for her own damn self!" Heiji hissed back. Even if Ran was too pale and brittle - ready to snap - to pay either of them the slightest bit of attention. It was fucking eerie.

Someone knocked at the door - probably another officer, another vaguely unreassuring update on their lack of progress - and Ran drifted up to go get it.

"E-_Edogawa-san!_"

Heiji's head snapped up in tandem with Kazuha's. Over Ran's shoulder, he could see a stranger at the door: a stout, short-haired woman, face ashen and features pinched behind cat-eye glasses.

Ran slumped out of the shock. "You know."

The woman - Conan's mom, Heiji was gonna kill Yuusaku for whatever twist he was adding to the plan with this - looked nervously down the stairs, towards the agency office full of police, then back at Ran. "May I come in?"

"Of- of course!" Ran bowed the woman inside, shutting and locking the door behind her more from habit than anything else. Shoes exchanged for slippers, and Edogawa sat down heavily on the couch across from Heiji, pain weighing oppressively down in her wake.

"Tea," Kazuha muttered, hurrying away. Dishware clattered in the kitchenette a moment later, Kazuha fussing politely in Ran's place.

Ran didn't seem to notice. She took a spot on the couch next to Edogawa, angled as if trying to pretend she wasn't hovering or worried to death herself.

"Edogawa-san..." Ran swallowed at the woman's dull-eyed glance, but gamely went on, "Edogawa-san, this is Hattori Heiji-san. He's a friend of... of Conan's."

The woman's disguise was perfect, Heiji thought, eyeing her coolly. Though she had a handkerchief out, twisting it between deceptively thick fingers, the thin cloth and her face were both perfectly dry. A hint of gray in the pale makeup, shadows under her eyes only barely hidden by the thick-rimmed glasses, bloodshot vessels behind gray contacts that made her look even more dull-eyed.

The stare coming out of those steely eyes glinted sharply, knowingly, at Heiji, before returning to the shattered, dead gaze.

"And this is Toyama Kazuha-san," Ran added, as Kazuha returned with a tea tray and passed out cups. "Kazuha-san, Heiji-kun, this is Edogawa Fumiyo-san." A strained pause. "Conan-kun's mother."

Well, obviously. But why was she here now? If someone spotted that she was in disguise, or decided to keep her under police surveillance (which would effectively be the same thing), or god forbid had her wait for another ransom call-

It clicked. "_You're _the bitch," Heiji said.

Edogawa nearly dropped her teacup. "I beg your pardon?"

Crap, now he was committed. Sometimes he kinda hated his tendency to leap before he looked. Except no, being the other way would make him too much like that jerk Hakuba. "Ransom call," Heiji explained, a thumb tapping his ball cap upwards. It made him look more open and approachable or some such junk. "'Tell the bitch to make the trade'," he quoted. "It ain't money, he'd've said so if it was. Hell, he'd've said what it was if you didn't know what he wanted. So."

"So," Edogawa replied, in the same cool, final tone. Carefully, gently, she set her teacup and saucer back onto the tray, then folded her hands in her lap. "I can see why my son befriended you. You think entirely too much alike."

"Edogawa-san...?" Ran asked.

"I'm not." Her gaze dropped, hands clenching. "There never was an Edogawa Fumiyo. Or an Edogawa Conan, for that matter."

Ran went white. "Edo- what are you _saying_?"

The woman took a bracing, shuddering breath, hunching a bit more protectively about herself. "I'm putting this all wrong," she muttered. "Let me start from the beginning."

"It all started eighteen years ago..." Edogawa's voice shifted, calming into the regular cadences of an amateur actor. Which, Heiji figured, probably fit the character she was about to develop for them.

"We've always been a small family. Not very tight-knit, but small enough that we counted family out into third and fourth cousins or so. The youngest in my generation was Hibari, a girl about three years younger than me. The others were ten to fifteen years older; I didn't know them very well, though we used to tease Hibari for the resemblence..." Edogawa trailed off, then shook her head, driving the memory away.

"It was my first year of college, and Hibari's first year of high school. I didn't see her very much, our schedules didn't match and we lived in different towns, but I heard plenty when she started seeing this boy...

"The family wasn't really sure what to make of him, you have to understand. He was a quiet, intelligent boy, very good scores; the archery team was always after him to join permanently, but he wanted to focus on his studies. He had this way of charming people by letting them think they were charming him, and the next second fading into the background so that you almost forgot he was ever there. It... we thought he would fit in well with us, actually, if only he and Hibari were five years older.

"But he did have a way of charming people. And Hibari... she was as brilliant as the rest of us, but she was still fifteen. So mistakes happen, as they do, and he ran from his duty, as boys do, and the term ended and began again, and at the next Obon my parents told me not to mention the baby.

"I figured that she'd given it up for adoption, and that was that.

"Three years later, I was finishing my final semester, when I got a call from my parents." She swallowed hard, then, in a harsh, terrified woman's voice, said, "'He's...he's killed Hibari. He wants the baby. Run.'"

Ran and Kazuha gasped.

Edogawa ignored them, voice flattening back out into her own, clenched fists going white at the knuckles. "I hung up, walked off campus, and never looked back.

"Years passed. I never stayed in one place too long. A few months here, a few weeks there... but eventually I began to relax. Surely he wasn't chasing insignificant little me, through so many changes of identity, for so many years. It would be strange to abandon a nice job like I had. It would be strange not to date at my age. It would be strange to refuse a proposal from the man I... found so very special. So I married, and I had my son...

"... And six months later, my husband died in a car accident. Among the sympathy cards at the funeral was one that read, 'Hibari's son was not allowed a father.'

"I took the baby and ran again. This time... this time, I never stayed more than a few months. Sometimes it was only days, a woman and child vacationing at a resort somewhere while I set up the next identity.

"Our life continued like that for over six years. I told him when he was four, that there was a very bad man looking for us and we had to use lots of different names to hide, but he was always my little son and I was always his mother, no matter what names we used."

She shook her head. "I wish I'd never had to tell him. Something in his eyes changed that day. I think he's always looking for the monster hunting people.

"Still. Six years passed, with us always hiding, always changing, and one night I'd left him with Agasa... the one family friend I thought no one could ever trace back to me... and you walked in on them. And my little boy - my brilliant, precious little boy - he held onto his wits and invented an identity to give you right there on the spot.

"It was genius. The one move that no one could predict, because I hadn't thought of it - I'd left my son before, with people like Agasa, but only ever for a few days, and never with people I'd never met. And it was with a private detective, a retired police officer with friends still on the force. What could be safer?"

No one had any answer to that - obviously, it hadn't been safe _enough _- as Edogawa rested her head against her entwined hands in defeat. "I don't know how he found you. But," her voice broke, "I should have told you."

Silence.

Then the table cracked under Ran's fist. "Damn right you should have told us!" she snapped, rounding in fury on the woman. "No, actually, you should have told the _police _the instant you got that call from your parents! Or when you got that horrible card at the funeral - that card was evidence! You would have been protected - Conan-kun would've been safe all these years!" She dashed tears angrily from her eyes and nearly screamed at her target, "_What is wrong with you_?"

"She's a thief."

All three women jerked, turning stricken eyes on Heiji. Heiji tipped his hat lower over his eyes, staring straight into Edogawa's pale face. "And 'even a thief takes ten years to learn his trade', ain't that the saying, Edogawa-san?" She stared at him, frozen, but Heiji continued on, ticking key points off in the air. "Ya ran off, twenty-two years old, nothin' but the clothes on yer back and a homicidal nutjob trackin' ya. Either ya knew how ta forge papers and steal money, or ya had contacts who did." _And your story has you related to the Kurobas. To the Kaitou Kids and the Phantom Lady. To the great mystery writer Kudou Yuusaku... and the way we do it, a detective and a criminal are two sides of the same coin. So..._ "Either way, forgery or contacts, ya had ta get 'em from yer parents."

Edogawa didn't deny it.

Heiji sighed. "Okay, yeah, neither confirm nor deny, it's not like yer reasons for avoidin' the cops all these years are relevant to findin' Conan now. Just got one more question, then." One last point to tie the whole story together. "Ya know the name Kuroba?"

"I... yes."

Heiji pulled the photographs out of his vest pocket, picked out the copy of Hakuba's, and flicked it skidding across the table at Edogawa.

She picked it up gingerly, as if it might explode in her face, and looked at it blankly for a couple of seconds. Then her expression cracked. "This is..." _Hibari's baby_, she didn't need to say. The way she'd spun the story, Heiji knew that she couldn't claim Kuroba Kaito as anyone else. He managed to keep his face neutral as she hastily set the photograph back on the table. "You shouldn't have shown me that," she told him, voice tight.

"I know. 'Coz that's the trade, ain't it. Your kid for his. And now ya know the kid's a Kuroba. Moral dilemma, 'cept there's a couple problems with it." And he tossed the other photograph on top of the first. "Like Kudou Shin'ichi."

Edogawa stared. "... She had twins?"

"No idea, but it sure looks that way, don't it?" He let her stare at the photographs in silence for a bit, her eyes soft and starting to brim with tears, then he stood and reached out a hand. "I'm gonna hafta ask you to come with me and tell it again to the cops."

A long moment passed in silence. Then she sagged in defeat, and let him pull her up and out the door.

Whatever the hell the Kudous were thinking, Heiji couldn't do anything but help make it happen. Right?

-0-0-0

Koln frowned at the photocopied fax in his hand, deciphering police shorthand with the ease of long practice. Edogawa Fumiyo. She would be the perfect lure - though whether she'd be more useful in police custody or his own, he couldn't decide - except...

There always had to be a catch, didn't there. And the Edogawa woman's story didn't ring true. Could there have been a distant cousin known to the family but not the Syndicate clean-up crew? Obviously, there'd been the Kudou and Kuroba patriarchs, so a third was not out of the question. Not when dealing with the kind of genius the line consistently produced.

However, the part about her husband's death, and the card at the funeral: _that_ was patently untrue. Had the Syndicate located her - had Calvados located her - Koln would've been alerted, and the woman would've been captured, her husband and infant taken hostage until they determined that she didn't know anything about the twins.

No one would've been stupid enough to kill her husband and spook her out of their reach, instead of capturing them all without warning. So what was the woman's game...?

The door clicked open, and a hint of expensive perfume tainted the air. "Go away, Vermouth."

"Now, why would I do that?"

The voice wasn't familiar, but that didn't mean anything when it came to Vermouth. Koln rolled his eyes and glanced over his shoulder, only to find the very bitch he'd been thinking of. "Edogawa Fumiyo."

She smirked. "Am I?" she asked in Vermouth's voice.

Ah. _That_ was the game. Koln opened his mouth, then paused. Wherever the Edogawa woman was, it clearly wasn't here, and Vermouth wouldn't tell him even if she knew. Edogawa was too good of a bargaining chip to give up, if she could be found and taken. "How much of that was true?" he asked instead.

Vermouth's eyes gleamed brightly. "Except for the card at the funeral..." _Everything_, her expression seemed to say. Not that Koln trusted that one bit. But Vermouth's smirk grew fangs, and she laughingly added, "Her husband really _did _die in an accident. Poor little Fumiyo's been running from nothing all these years!"

He failed to see the humor. "And the point of bringing the twins' paternity to police attention?"

"Big picture, darling. Big picture." One stubby-fingered hand twirled a lock of her hair. "If the police are looking for a single lunatic, they aren't looking for an organized group. Correct?"

Damn. The bitch had a point. Either way, he'd wasted his time on the police report. Koln turned away and dropped the file in the trash. "Get back under police surveillance, _Fumiyo_."

She blew a noisy kiss at him. "Don't be insulting, dear. 'I' never left it."

Koln spun sharply back around, but she'd vanished from sight.

-0-0-0

Conan rolled out of bed slightly earlier than was decent, the clouds edged in gold and pastels and the sun glinting between the trees outside his east-facing window. He hadn't been able to sleep in since the apotoxin, something about the drug interfering with human growth hormone and biorhythms; he'd tuned Ai out after that, since he wasn't falling asleep during cases and that's what mattered. Still, he did yawn as he changed out of the oversized T-shirt he'd been given as sleepwear, and into a rough-and-tumble plaid buttondown and thankfully unembellished girls' jeans.

(Conan's mind couldn't quite parse the image of Koizumi with that of a little girl at all, much less one who would've needed tough play clothes. But he supposed that she had to have explored the dirty garretts and thick woods of this house. Gods knew nothing could've kept the Shounen Tantei from doing it, or he himself when he was little.)

A pair of socks completed the outfit, and Conan headed out into the gloomy halls of the house proper. He'd go back to the drawing room, watch the news and maybe get some breakfast, and maybe Kaito would finally come out of hiding...

Or maybe not. The blue light of a television was flickering out from under Kaito's door, just as it had for the past two and a half days. That idiot. Conan knew Kaito hadn't slept since Sunday evening; they'd escaped in the wee hours that night, and spent most of Monday walking the storm drains. And although it was silent _now_, the sound muted for the night, Conan had heard the news playing every time he'd passed Kaito's room before. Considering some of the things the more offensive pundits had been saying...

Conan stifled an aggravated growl as he opened the door. Kaito was going to go to bed if Conan had to knock him down and _sit _on him.

Except that might not be necessary after all. Conan carefully, quietly, let the door close behind him, staring at Kaito slumped over in a wingback chair before the tv. He'd curled up improbably small, knees near his chest, feet tucked between the seat cushion and arm. His head looked as if it was about to fall under the chair's wing and possibly roll away. One arm lay hooked up over the back of the seat; the other was flung across his chest, remote held as delicately as any jewel in its setting.

He was fast asleep. Or, more likely, had passed out some unknowable number of hours before. The tea tray with yesterday's dinner was untouched, sitting on the floor next to him, so Kaito had been asleep at least thirteen hours ago. However, Conan had seen the butler carrying yesterday's lunch back, and it had been down to scraps, so... If Kaito fallen asleep shortly after that, then, assuming no naps, he'd spent almost sixty hours awake and no less than nineteen asleep.

That meant that if Conan tried to make Kaito more comfortable he'd probably wake up. And then he'd refuse to go back to sleep, and return to watching his life continue to be torn and picked apart. The same would happen if Conan tried to take the remote. However, he could probably turn off the tv without disturbing Kaito.

Conan reached for the power button, then paused. He could turn off the tv, yes, but... the channel was about to go into the morning news show, and hadn't he just been thinking he'd go downstairs and watch it? He could stay here instead, where it was less _(lonely)_ full of sneaking Koizumis and creeping butlers making him understand why Kaito had been apprehensive about coming here.

Right. He'd just stay here.

Conan climbed into the matching wingback chair, its springs creaking from disuse, and settled in as the opening to _Mainichiuri_, with its terrible pun and stylized red sun on a seasonal backdrop, flew across the screen. If he could get the remote, he'd change the channel, but it wasn't from the quality of the program. He mostly just objected to the show's title on principle. The anchors weren't any worse than average, anyway, though their overpolished technique got on his nerves. Downside to being raised by Kudou Yukiko.

The show's logo vanished with the camera panning onto the hosts, who bowed ever-so-slightly in their seats as closed captioning wrote: "_Good morning, everyone_."

The male anchor began with a calm-faced, "_Today is Thursday, the twenty-first. I'm Wakamoto Ken_."

"_And I'm Awaya Reiko_," his co-anchor added. "_And this is Mainichiuri_."

"_Our top story this morning: new information in last Thursday's kidnapping of seven-year-old Edogawa Conan._" Conan sat bolt upright, staring straight into Wakamoto's earnest face._ "Although he was seen late Sunday night in the company of a teen tentatively identified as International Criminal #1412, Kaitou Kid, it seems that may not be the case at all."_He looked at his co-anchor._ "Isn't that right, Reiko-san?"_

"_Indeed, Ken-san._" She nodded and turned to the camera, eyes bright and eager._ "Sources within the police department claim that the man seen had another possible identity:_" her head tipped knowingly,_ "that of Kaitou Kid's biological twin_."

Conan felt his mind go completely, utterly blank. The newscaster's faces suddenly seemed very far away, words slowly blurring illegible. Not slowly enough. "_Authorities have been unable to locate the missing twin, so as of yet, no names have been released_."

He couldn't see - could hardly breathe, something tight inside _knowing _before he could think - and then it was as if the facts surged into his mind.

_Kaito's mother had been due near the start of June._

_Kaito looked exactly like Shinichi._

_There was no difference between a newborn and a month-old preemie._

No. No no no no no... the umbilical cord, it would've been obvious-

_For what, a week?_ something scornful in him asked. Shuffle enough paperwork after that, and you'd never know. Except that, somehow, Koln had found out.

_My condolences on your loss._ It could've been for the previous Kid, whoever it had been when they were both eight (Kuroba Toichi, the great magician, some instinct said), but... the Syndicate thought Shinichi was dead. They knew there'd been twins, or Koln did at least - _Edogawa's talent has earned him his cousin's place_ - and he thought Shinichi was the missing one.

And Kaito knew. That was the only way that whole first conversation worked now. Why bother offering condolences for a man ten years gone, when a twin was so much closer and more recent? Why wouldn't Koln clarify who he'd meant, to help break Kaito, if he hadn't been sure Kaito knew who Shinichi was to him?

_She was my mother, Tantei-kun._ Murdered when he was three, and the murder covered up by the Syndicate, scarce weeks before Conan had moved to America for a couple of years. Why would he have brought it to _Conan_? Surely he had other resources - surely he would've clung to her secret as painfully as he did the previous Kid's...

It all made too much sense. Only one truth.

A soft exhale caught his attention, Kaito's nose wrinkling in a quick grimace before smoothing back into sleep.

Conan's palms suddenly itched to smack Kaito awake, kick the chair and knock him out of it, demand answers, demand that it _not be true_- Conan quickly jerked his eyes away and forced the rage down. Patience. He had patience. He wasn't violent (soccer balls to criminal's heads aside); he wasn't going to hurt his... his... fellow captive, fellow escapee, the guy who'd run a kilometer over the rooftops carrying him in the dead of night. He could damn well wait.

As for why he had to damn-well-wait, that was obvious enough too, right? What could Kaito have done before they were caught? Walked up to him on the street and said _Hi, I'm your brother, Kaitou Kid, wanna give me a break and not toss my lily-clad behind in jail?_ Because that would've gone over so well.

After they were caught, with gods knew how many bugs recording their every word for the Syndicate, didn't even bear thinking about.

But his parents could've mentioned... _sure _they could've, because Conan's first impulse hadn't been to kick Kaito awake and demand answers. Riiiiight. If he'd had any inkling he was adopted, he would've been digging into the mystery the instant his parents let him out of their sight. A murderous criminal syndicate would've just made it that much more irresistable.

And there was the sheer reckless stupidity that made him even more like Kid.

Goddammit.

Conan rubbed his face with one hand, curling the other arm around his knees, as the tv cut away from the weather with an eye-catching _Special Report_ filling the screen in bold.

Great. Considering the top news for the entire week had been Kaitou Kid, chances were it was yet another revelation. What were they going to drop on his head _now_? ... _Please don't be an announcement of the twin's identity_...

The screen cleared to show a podium and stage set across an anonymous conference room. Two rows of uniformed police stood at attention on the stage, faces Conan had seen in passing somewhere... at heists, he thought, and knew he wouldn't have figured it out if he hadn't just been thinking of Kid.

A vaguely familiar man took the podium. Broad-jawed, chisel-chinned, a thin moustache and heavy eyebrows around the usual sharp gaze of a cop... now what was his name again?

He coughed, and began to speak. The captioning followed a moment later.

"_Good morning, thank you all for coming. I am Superintendent Chaki Shintarou, head of Division Two of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, in charge of the Kaitou Kid Task Force. I have just a few remarks before we begin._

_"I'd like to start out by saying that the Department is thankful that, over the course of the Kaitou Kid's career, we have never injured nor authorized the use of excessive force against him_." Something in the tone made heat prickle at Conan's cheeks... then, with the memory of a high-speed chase in Osaka, days with a warbling dove bandaged on the windowsill, the heat rose to Conan's eyes and made the screen go watery.

He blinked the wetness away hard, missing a few words before Chaki finished, "_The Task Force stands behind Nakamori Ginzo and his decisions_." Conan couldn't help but hear the _no matter what those bastards in IA decide_ left unsaid. It explained the double row of cops behind Chaki in lieu of flags: a show of solidarity.

_"Now, to the cases. We've been coordinating with Division One, Section Three, on the kidnapping of Edogawa Conan, and the Bomb Squadron on the bombing at Ekoda High. The Task Force's primary case, however, is the discovery of Kaitou Kid's base of operations and his identity. That is the case we will be overviewing and taking questions about today._

_"Let us begin with the alleged identity of Kaitou Kid. We have determined that the current Kaitou Kid is _not _the first in operation. The evidence suggests that the original Kaitou Kid was Kuroba Toichi, while the current is Kuroba Kaito. We have yet to discover motive for either of them._" Chaki paused, a single second as good as a sigh._ "We may never know._

_"As for the items discovered in the home, we have found four portraits of the Kuroba parents as Kaitou Kid and Phantom Lady, a thief of similar skill who vanished approximately twenty years ago, and several training manuals detailing many of Kid's techniques and past crimes._

_"We have not found any stolen goods, explosives residue, or plans for crimes postdating last month, nor do we expect to, as the only item Kid has not returned has been the baseball. We are continuing to search for the funds required to support Kid's heists, and for the Kurobas themselves._

_"I will take questions now."_

An immediate forest of hands popped up, fingertips just visible at the lower edge of the screen, and Chaki began pointing off-camera to select questions.

_"Do you expect Kaitou Kid to continue his activities?"_

_"We have no expectations either way at this time."_

_"What can you tell us about this morning's revelation that Kaitou Kid has a twin?"_ Conan flinched.

_"That aspect of the case is under investigation by Division One, but we are aware that there is an alleged twin."_

Damn. Conan hadn't even realized he'd had a tiny spark of hope that the media had messed up somehow until that spark died.

_"Was the twin helping the Kaitou Kid in his crimes?"_

_"He was not."_

Conan felt his grip tighten around his legs. That wasn't an 'I don't know', that was an 'I know damn well who he is and it's not possible'. Yet more evidence that it was Kudou Shinichi.

_"Are you certain there is a twin, rather than a gambit to throw the police off Kid's trail?"_

_"We are certain that it is a real person rather than an alias. As to whether or not he is the Kid's twin, we are currently analyzing samples taken from personal belongings of both Kid and the person in question."_

_"Is it true that the discovery of this twin came from the ransom demand for Edogawa Conan?"_

_"No. The identification was made from other evidence."_

Wait, wait, _ransom demand?_ Koln had clearly had no intention of... of... arrgh. This had Kudou Yuusaku written all over it. When Conan got his hands on his paren-

Oh. Yeah.

_"-twin in order to trade him for the child?"_

_"I am not privy to that information."_

Well _fuck _that, they were still his parents and he was going to _get them_. Somehow.

_"What can you tell us about the relation between the Kurobas' disappearance and the bombing of Kuroba Kaito's school?"_

_"We are relatively certain that the bombing spooked them into hiding."_

_"You say that Phantom Lady was the Kid's predecessor, what exactly do you mean by that?"_

_"We have found training notebooks indicating that Phantom Lady had some hand in teaching the first Kaitou Kid, though they did not work together."_

_"In regards to not authorizing the use of excessive force, what of the occasion when-"_

Soft sounds from the other chair caught Conan's attention again. This time, when he looked, Kaito groaned uncomfortably and blinked open bleary eyes, the remote thumping softly to the cushions. "Nuh...?"

Conan stayed silent, watching Kaito unfold himself and twist back to a more proper position in the chair. He could see when Kaito truly woke, eyes going sharp and intent on the tv. Conan glanced back at the screen, where a reporter was asking, "-_embarrassed that a high school student has managed to evade as many as four hundred and seventy-two fully trained officers of the law?"_

_"No," _Chaki answered. _"Kaitou Kid wrangled himself into the security preparations too many times for us to be anything but proud to have put up such a good showing against him. Next question."_

Conan may as well distract Kaito before the reporters went back into the painful questions. Besides, he had his own to ask. But first...

"Earlier," Conan murmured. Kaito jerked and nearly fell out of the chair, a familiar knife-blade grin slapped up onto his face before he managed to recognize Conan. Conan politely ignored it. "He said that they're glad they never hurt you." Something flickered behind Kaito's infuriating smirk, so Conan turned back to the tv and added, "That they've never condoned the use of force against you. And they're standing behind Nakamori-keibu no matter what Internal Affairs decides. But mostly that they're glad they didn't hurt," _a kid, someone's daughter's best friend_, "you."

He could feel Kaito staring, still and wary as a wounded cat, just waiting for the catch behind why Conan had told him that. He really did know Conan too well.

_As he should, since he's..._

Conan risked a quick glance at Kaito, and yup, just like an alley cat with a Kid smirk. "You missed the morning news, you know." Don't look at him, don't look at him, don't- "Made the top story again, at least on _Mainichiuri_."

"Did I, now."

"Yup." His back was starting to hurt from how tightly he was holding himself. "Turns out you might not've kidnapped me at all. Turns out it might've been..." His voice cut out. Conan swallowed past the burn. "Might've been... your twin."

Silence.

"Names haven't been released yet. But." Conan swallowed again, and dragged his eyes up to meet Kaito's. "It's me, isn't it."

The Kid mask stayed perfect for another second, then... it was like watching the rain wash mud from a window, a terrible human weariness seeping through, until it was just Kaito. "Yeah," he answered, the voice that came out sounding worn and pained and vulnerable. "I'm sorry."

"Don't." It snapped out before Conan could think, demanding Kaito's attention before he could look away, leaving only the truth to lay heavy between them. "I get why you couldn't tell me before. It would've just hurt me, endangered you... and then we were captured and couldn't risk it, and then all this," he waved at the screen, where the news station had started up their old pre-heist reel of Kid's career, "happened."

Kaito stared, too shocked to be Kid or shamed.

Conan settled back into the chair again, and added, "I've had an hour to think about it."

"Ah," Kaito said, for lack of any better reply. "So, you're...?"

"Mad as hell and trying not to think about it."

"... I was, too."

"Yeah? What did you do?"

"Pretended I was you and went stomping around looking for incriminating evidence in the house." Kaito's mouth quirked upwards, tentatively. "In your voice."

"Figures."

The quirk turned into a real, though still tentative, smile. "I found baby pictures."

Conan _did not want to know_. "Right." He levered himself up. "Enough feeling sorry for myself. Let's go. We have work to do."

TBC

Mainichi: Every day  
Nichiuri: Beika-based tv station


	9. Chapter 9

Warnings, disclaimers, wheeee evil.

I am, in fact, apparently not taking liberties with a certain police rank. Many thanks to Asuka who found someone with raws of the correct chapter, and to Ellen who found a forum with a ranks reference thread to compare to.

Chapter 9

Pts. 35-40

"-_police have not been able to locate the missing twin, so as of yet, no names have been_-"

_Click_.

Ai watched silently as Hakuba sat back against the leather seats in front of her, tiredly combing his bangs up and away from closed eyes. "Well," he murmured over the enka music now wailing softly from the convertible's speakers. "That shall take the public... what, five minutes to deduce? Then another twenty to correlate their findings and descend upon Kudou-san's house."

"Very likely, botchama," came the reply. Ai's gaze snapped to the elderly woman at the wheel, who tilted her head over her shoulder and cast Ai a girlish smile that was as false as her don't-mind-me, just-a-housekeeper air. "I'm glad we picked you up early, sweetie," she simpered, as if it was unthinkable that the woman could have a high _dan_ in some martial art or another. (She moved entirely too much like Mouri-san, in Ai's opinion.) "Wouldn't want to imagine the traffic over at your house later."

Out of the corner of her eye, Ai saw Hakuba shift. She glanced over to meet his gaze, as sharp and assessing as Kudou's but without the faint comfort of the tangled relationship of guilt, honor, commiseration... so much that ensured, and insured, her friendship with the smaller detective.

Peace through Mutual Assured Destruction. It had worked for nations for decades. But the only 'mutual' here was the snub-nosed pistol tucked in the back of Ai's shorts.

Hakuba calmly turned away as the car pulled into a tree-lined parking lot, anchored at one end by the round dome of Hakuba Labs and its rearing horse logo. "The family entrance, please, Baaya."

That earned them both a startled glance. "But... the girl-"

"Grandpa will understand."

"If you're certain..." But the woman gamely drove around to the side of the building, and parked in a grove of trees. She then flipped down her windshield visor and uncovered the mirror, revealing a number pad hidden in the felted covering, and pressed several keys.

A loud clank shuddered through Ai's body, and she dug her nails into her seatbelt as the car began to sink.

"Don't be alarmed," Hakuba remarked, pitching his voice over the hissing of pneumatic valves. "I'll show you the emergency exits first." The lift shuddered with a final, jarring thunk, and they rolled forward into a parking garage, little more than a concrete tunnel with parking spaces visible to the side up ahead. "The first exit, should you require a vehicle, is directly below us," Hakuba said, gesturing vaguely downwards. Behind them, the valves started hissing again, and Ai peered over her shoulder to see the patch of grass rising on what looked like four poles and a chain-link fence, marking the sides of a ramp going even deeper into the ground. Hakuba continued, "There are motorized scooters that you may be able to operate, located to the far right of the main door. Keys are in the ignitions."

The lift clanged back into place, shutting away the (escape) last of the morning sunlight.

All right. Scooters, keys, main door. The chain-link fence had a gate in it, visible now in the garage lights, whose latch didn't seem to have a lock on it. There was no telling where that tunnel came out, but... Hakuba Labs had been written off, last she knew. So the chances she'd need to escape were relatively slim as of yet.

The car paused, then turned and backed into a parking space. Ai felt her eyes go wide as she peered over her shoulder: the wall here centered on a bona fide stainless steel bank vault, pockmarked with heavy rivets around a giant cog of a door. To either side sat small shrines, little more than dollhouse-sized wooden boxes on pedestals.

"You may be able to identify the main door yourself," Hakuba remarked dryly behind her.

"... The bank vault?" Between two shrines, between a pair of unremarkable double-wide fire doors painted the same gray as the concrete and steel, behind a line of iron posts marking the edge of the parking spaces. Unless the vault was a decoy...

The driver's door slammed, and Ai flinched, suddenly reminded of the dangerous woman listening to her every word.

"Grandpa is known to have a knack for subtlety. I have yet to see it," Hakuba said in lieu of an answer, clearly pretending he couldn't see Ai's nervousness. He stepped from the car, held the door politely until Ai clambered out as well, then gestured to the nearest shrine.

"Omoikane is over a trapdoor to the vehicular exit, but you won't be able to get a scooter out through it. Tenjin," and he pointed at the other shrine, "opens to a secondary, pedestrian escape route. The right-side fire door is the scooter bay, and the leftmost fire door is, in fact, a fire door." Some hint of amusement flickered across his face, there and gone almost before Ai could catch it. "It can only be opened from the inside. This month's code to reach the scooters -" Baaya made a quiet sound of protest, "- is zashiki-warashi, with the hyphen. Saguru and guest," he finished, leaning close to a speaker grid on the door.

Blue light scanned over his eyes, then bleeped a flat refusal at him. Hakuba sighed. "And _child_, Grandpa." The vault door clunked open. "Thank you.

"Welcome to Hakuba Labs."

The place didn't look like much at first glance: just a plain white room, broken by a short line of gray lockers along the far wall. Frosted glass doors blended into the wall straight ahead, with another one on their right. Over on the left wall, the door had a clear square at an adult's eye level, and a dome light in a steel cage above it. The aforementioned fire door, which had looked perfectly ordinary outside, was a mechanical nightmare of reinforcement and deadbolts on this side, all clearly hooked into a single lever for easy escape.

Hakuba strode across to the lockers and opened two near the far end, gesturing into the wider one. Ai peeked in to find a rack of lab coats, mostly in children's sizes. Boxes of paper shoe covers and small latex gloves were stacked at the base of the locker.

"Babysit here a lot?" she asked dryly, taking a coat in her own size.

"We don't get our own lockers until we've finished growing," Hakuba replied calmly, as he hung up his suit jacket and shrugged into a tailored white lab coat. "Clean rooms are to our left," he added as he toed into a pair of pristine white athletic shoes. "Straight ahead is programming and data analysis, which merges with the public institute upstairs via a series of locked storage rooms. This way is biochemistry."

Ai finished pulling the shoe covers on, grabbed a handful of the gloves, and trotted after him towards the right-hand door. Just before he opened it, though, he paused.

"Baaya." Ai tensed, but all Hakuba said was, "Perhaps you could go locate Grandpa for me? I do need to discuss something with him after I've settled Haibara-san in."

This was not part of the plan. Ai tore her gaze from the housekeeper, who bowed and stayed out in the lobby as they entered the biochemistry labs. Once the frosted-glass door fell shut and the electronic lock beeped, she fixed her stare on Hakuba. "What," she asked coolly, "are you planning to discuss with your grandfather?"

"Plausible deniability," the boy replied. "Ethics. A cot and meals for you. Some pretense to summon Dad here-" Ai clenched her fists. "-_We need his resources_, Haibara-san."

And Hakuba's father was the Superintendent General; he needed to know that the police were compromised; if he was one of the far too many moles within the force they were all - as Hattori had so elegantly put it - balls-to-the-wall screwed anyway. They didn't need to have that argument again.

The idea still put a twisting chill in the pit of Ai's stomach.

"Even as often as we sweep for bugs," Hakuba continued, "I still refuse to discuss anything so sensitive in the environs of my home." He stopped and opened one of the many side doors, revealing a room lined with sleek machinery. "Far better to be here. Grandpa, as you may have noticed, is paranoid about industrial espionage."

"I cannot imagine why," Ai grumbled. A three-ring binder, as thick as her hand and filled with printouts, landed in her field of vision, open to a schematic sketch of one of the machines directly in front of her. The match was unmistakable: a two-meter-high wedge of steel with an egg-shaped clear dome set in the angled face, a small drawer with - as the drawing claimed - a sample bank ready for test tubes, and a line of buttons along the top and bottom.

The bottom buttons were marked for flashing lights and the occasional beep, harmless distractions for small children. The top ones, however...

Nutrient Medium. Mitosis Promoting Factor Increase/Decrease. Tissue Selection: (Connective, Muscular, Epithelial). Targeted Antibacterial Solution Valve.

Ai stopped herself from hyperventilating by sheer willpower. "Hakuba-san. This machine." If she was interpreting this correctly, this item alone was at _least _twenty years ahead of its time. "The schematics seem to imply that it can clone tissue in significant amounts."

"It does," Hakuba replied, shocking her to the core. "Nothing so much as an entire organism, of course. Single organs, at best. Small sheets of skin. Long muscles. Teeth." Hazel eyes met hers. "With a little tweaking, _perhaps _a partial skull. As I said, Grandpa and I need to discuss ethics."

Ai stared.

"Horrifying, isn't it," Hakuba said quietly, his gaze closing off once more and returning to the innocuous machine. "How easily it could be misused. Worse, with the next logical step in upgrading it..."

Upgrading to... full cloning? If the technology became public, or if They'd discovered the family labs... (They wouldn't have written off Hakuba Labs had anyone discovered the advances not accessible to the public or employees.) So if they'd known... One Syndicate scientist, a clone of Kudou Shinichi or Miyano Shiho, and a dose of apotoxin.

Ai sat down hard on the nearest lab stool. Hakuba half-turned, arms out as if to steady her before he drew them back in.

"Exactly," he said. Then, first pushing the binder over to her, he took a step back towards the doorway. "You'd best start to familiarize yourself with the equipment. I don't think you'll want to risk leaving for a few days." And with that, he left.

-0-0-0

Kaito spent the next ten minutes or so burying the sting of Conan's skittish escape. _He only just found out, you moron. It's _not _a rejection, not until he's had time to come to terms with everything._ He found his smile again, perfectly casual and perfectly false, just in time. Light footsteps padded out in the hall, and the door creaked open again to let Conan peek in with the strangest expression on his face.

"Ki... Kaito? You know how you said Koizumi didn't, um, take blood?" Kaito sat up straight, alarm warring with curiosity in little jolts in his spine. Conan's grip tightened on the door. "She seems to have changed her mind."

"_Has _she now?" Kid's sharpest smile spread across his face, and Kaito slid from his chair with perfect aplomb.

Conan sidestepped to block the doorway better. "Not mine," he clarified. "Yours."

"How very interesting!" Kid breezed past Conan, scooping him up and getting a slight squawk of offense. "Did she mention anything else?"

"_No_." Several sharp kicks to Kid's knee did exactly nothing, sock-clad little feet entirely ignorable in the scheme of things. "But she's got some weird hawk down there."

_Hawk? _ Kid didn't speed up or stumble, but it was a very near thing. He knew one bird of prey, after all... but what would she be doing here?

_Koizumi couldn't have phoned Hakuba. The house hasn't had an unfortunate accident with a gas main, after all, and he has to be wire-tapped at the very least. Though possibly his surveillance is being messed with. Vermouth does seem to have a vested interest in keeping us out of Koln's hands._

_... We should probably start asking ourselves why._

Conan jabbed him with an elbow as they walked into the parlor, and Kid finally relented, dropping his brother onto the worn loveseat in a puff of dust. "Pest!"

"Kaitou Kid," Kid replied pointedly, stepping around the carved and scuffed end table to where Akako was feeding tiny mice to a red-banded falcon, the bird perched on the back of a ramrod-straight chair. "Is that-?"

"Watson-hime? Yes," Akako finished. She gave Kid an arch look. "Unlike _some _people, who are content to wallow in their misery - thank you for boosting the spell so nicely, by the way - _I _have been watching people of far more importance than the media."

"Including our dear Tantei-san, I take it."

"Delightful fellow," Akako said smugly. "Very apologetic. It's doing _marvelous _things to his strict moral code." A moment to bask in open pleasure at that, then she sobered almost imperceptibly. "Now then, I've seen that he won't be able to steal enough evidence from the investigation for your purposes, so I summoned sweet Watson here to help with that. Yes, you are a sweetheart, aren't you?" she cooed. Watson snapped at her hand, eliciting giggles as she plucked another tiny rodent from a box. "Have a mouse. Did you know, Hakuba-san's trained her to divebomb white cloths marked with blue triangles? It almost makes me want to ask his intentions. You owe me a new handkerchief, by the way."

Kid mentally sighed, then bowed and flicked a pristine white hankie out of thin air. Hm, it wasn't the type of lace border he would've chosen for her, but the delicate embroidered _A_ was exactly right. "For you. Now, as amusing as I'm sure it would be to see the incorruptible Tantei-san tampering with evidence, I think I would prefer to remain the unrivaled orchestrator of felonies here. So if we may?"

Akako snapped her fingers towards the couch. "Boy. How are you at taking blood samples?"

"... I can manage," Conan said warily. He slithered over the back of the sofa, landing with a muffled thump on the threadbare rug. "What do you need them for?"

"Nothing at all. Hakuba-san, on the other hand, will get caught stealing Kuroba-kun's brushes tomorrow morning without an alternative." Her smile went icy. "Terrible scandal and tragedy, a convenient suicide awaiting trial, his father pressured out of office... all sorts of nasty things. And then the head of all the Japanese police will have impeccable credentials and a penchant for wearing black."

Conan went white. "You... you can't know that."

Akako merely smirked and turned to Kid. "Veins, please."

Ugh. She didn't have to sound so happy about it. But Kid gamely unbuttoned his cuff, rolling up his sleeve as he settled into the wingback chair across from the witch. "That's rather farther than you usually predict," he said mildly.

Something troubled ghosted through Akako's eyes. "That path's unusually clear-cut." Conan set a tray of sterile implements on the table between them with a faint clatter. "Very unusually. It's _rare _for me to foresee death. And yet," she raised slim, bruised hands, "I've diverted two in as many weeks. Your ninjas are not good for Hakuba-san's health."

Kid felt a little chill trace down his spine, even as Conan snapped the tourniquet a little too forcefully into place around his bicep. Hakuba... twice already? "They're hardly our ninjas," Kid muttered. "Though we'll lay claim to them as quickly as possible, I presume. Prison terms for all, ne, Tantei-kun?"

Conan shot him a narrow-eyed glance, then turned back to pressing fingers against the inside of Kid's elbow. "That'll depend," he said, palpating for veins. "We need to get in touch with my... my parents. And Hakuba, since he's plotting something with your DNA. And figure out what they think they're doing."

"Mm." Kid watched Conan efficiently strip a needle from its packaging. "Which means we probably need some plans of our own, if only to have alternatives if we don't like their ideas." The needle slid home, and Conan reached for a detachable vial. "So, first decision. Do we want to run as far as we can and hope there's no agents there, or dig deep and plan to move as close as we can to the boss' backyard?"

The vial filled quickly. Conan settled a hand firmly on Kid's arm, glancing warily at Akako. "I have the boss' phone number," he said quietly.

That sounded like a vote for... wait. "You _what?_"

"I have. The boss'. Phone number. Hold still."

The Syndicate leader's phone number. If it was a landline... actually, even if it wasn't a landline, the area code would be invaluable. But. "I'm sensing a story," Kid said with perfect control. Conan switched to a second vial. "One I probably don't want to hear until I'm old enough to drink. I'll get it," and the phone number, "out of you later. For now, back to plans. I take it that was a vote for 'get as close as possible'?"

Conan wouldn't meet his eyes. "Running and hiding didn't work. Not for us, or our parents, or... our birth mother."

"I completely agree." Though it had sort of worked for fourteen years, it had left Hibari, Toichi, and techically Shinichi, dead. Four survivors out of seven might be acceptable for the Syndicate, but not for Kid. "Backyard it is, then. Tell me, how do you feel about skirts?"

-0-0-0

Heiji turned off the tv, frowning. Yeah, this was supposed to happen. Well, not 'supposed to' exactly like they'd done it on purpose, but they'd all figured the media weren't morons and this was a career-making kinda story. They'd accounted for the screaming headlines. And yeah, if Kudou heard it he was gonna flip. At least Kuroba might keep a level head - which sucked ass, expecting Kaitou Kid to do _that_, except that it took cold-forged steel balls to pull off half the crazyass stunts he did - since he'd already known.

So why did it feel like they'd missed something?

The agency phone rang.

Heiji got to the machine first, hand landing firmly on the reciever while Satou counted down and flicked switches. Two. One. Heiji lifted the set and hit speakerphone. "Mouri Detective Agency."

"I suppose 'Fumiyo' thought she was being very clever," a mechanical voice rasped: Conan's kidnapper, the twins' father, whoever was playing the role this time. _Fuck, I'd forgot the guy might not know there were twins. 'Coz he ain't real. And no way did Megure or Chaki authorize spilling that to the news. Fucking mole. Glad someone's on the ball with that, at least. So do NOT need the cops thinking this guy knew there were two kids when Fumiyo was clueless, and asking questions about how that happened._

The voice went slightly smug under the buzz of distortion. "Very clever, until the law ruined her little plot to get one over on me. Thank you for that, by the way. I'll extend the deadline for you... but I do expect to recieve both my boys, not just half. You wouldn't want me to have to return this one in kind, after all."

Damn. Damn, had to keep the guy on the phone, or pretend he was trying to anyway. "What," Heiji asked, baring his teeth, "ya really think the kid deserves that? Ya think yers would wantcha ta do that? To their little cousin, no less?"

A pause. Then, blankly, the voice said, "But it's none of their business."

_Click_.

Heiji stared at the handset, only half-hearing Satou hit the table, curse over the sound of the dial tone. "None of their business?" he repeated. "The fuck?"

"It's quite telling," Megure said gruffly. The inspector squeezed his bulk in between Heiji and Satou, heavy brows furrowed at the failed trace. "Though not encouraging. Tell me, Hattori-kun, if you were to leave a young lady in the lurch like that, how would you return?"

_Gurk_. "In pieces," Heiji answered automatically. Very small, squishy ones smeared into the pavement. "An' then Kazuha would turn me over to Okan." So yeah, he'd totally be hiding under Kudou's bed. Except for the part where Kazuha and Okan knew about Kudou, and their search for where he lived would get Ran joining the let's-pummel-Heiji team. Therefore, Antarctica was nice this time of year...

And Megure was staring at him with something almost like amusement gleaming under all the professionalism and worry.

Er. "Not that Kazuha would be- you know I- aw crap."

Megure snorted. "That's a more typical reaction, at least. The young men I've met in cases like this, they've all come back penitent. They grovel, beg forgiveness, make amends... When the child's been adopted away, they may use various avenues to reach the records - lawsuits, private detectives, bribes. Only once or twice has a young man lost his temper and attacked, and they panicked and ran when they come to their senses. None of this," he waved a hand, "hunting down the rest of the family craziness."

... Huh. He had a point. What the hell kinda guy did that? "An' so ya think that 'none of their business' fucked-up thing is..." What sort of guy thought his kids wouldn't give a fuck about him kidnapping and killing? Not unless he knew they were sociopaths or something, and he didn't even know who they were, and you just didn't automatically think that sort of shit unless you were a sociopath yourself.

And if he was a sociopath... "He don't think his kids are people. That they'll just hop onboard without any problem no matter what 'coz it don't matter what they think. Or if they think. 'Coz they ain't people, they're possessions." And now the murder and stalking made perfect sense, or it would if the guy actually existed. "So their mom an' her family, they stole his stuff, got rid of it like it weren't worth nothin', an' wouldn't let him get it back."

Satou's eyes went wide. "And that's why he waited three years in the first place. He would've a few months older than Kumori Hibari... coming of age is twenty. He didn't try to take them until he was old enough to legally own property."

Megure nodded, solemn and hard-faced. "Which doesn't bode well for Edogawa-kun's chances."

"'Coz Edogawa ain't his. Maybe it's fair trade ta keep him, but if he ain't the rightful owner..."

There was no need to finish the statement.

-0-0-0

Saguru had just finished outlining the situation - sans the specific results of the apotoxin - for his father's and grandfather's benefit when the door to his grandfather's office opened.

There were not many people who'd enter Grandpa's office without an invitation. Saguru turned, unsurprised to find his older cousin shutting the door behind him, Watson perched on one arm and a limp bundle of fur in his hand.

Kansatsu had discarded his public affectation of meekness, face gone sharp enough that the family resemblence shone through for once. "Sa-kun." He offered the bird and her victim in one hand, the other digging a tupperware of her meat from a pocket.

Well. That at least explained why Kansatsu was interrupting. Watson would go feral very quickly if she was permitted to eat captured prey. "Ah. Thank you, Kansa-nii." Feeding her was simple enough: Saguru could barely get the meat out fast enough for her to gulp down, snatching precisely-cut chunks deftly from between his fingers, mantling her wings over his hands like they were prey.

His mental counter ticked off grams from her daily limit, gauging that against Watson's body language, and he replaced the lid before she could eat to excess. She clacked her beak in slight disappointment.

"Shh. Good girl." Saguru settled her onto his shoulder as he accepted the bundle of fur from a smirking Kansatsu. The victim clinked in Saguru's hand.

_Clink?_

Saguru looked down, frowning. It wasn't a rodent at all: what he held was a simple fur pouch, bundled up with leather ties. Undoing the knots, the bundle opened to reveal a pair of cotton-wrapped tubes, deep red visible at the rounded tips. A piece of paper had been tied to one vial, folded over several times into a compact tag with a stylish _S_ scrawled on one side.

Who on earth would be sending (Saguru checked the vials) blood via falcon...?

Only one person. _Kid. Kuroba. He's okay._ Saguru felt relief tug the corner of his mouth upwards as he unfolded the note.

_Dearest Susan: as the nights grow long and we anticipate the coming rains to pierce to the bone, I wonder whose scarecrows shall fall in the unavoidable windstorm. It feels as though this autumn shall be more desolate than most; perhaps fortune shall allow it to be fleeting and the winter's seclusion short._

_Being assured that the information contained in this missive shall not fall into the wrong hands, and my assurance being both impeccable and irreproducible in matters such as this, I dare put pen to paper. _

_I must admit, though I have always been on the side of the white hats, I never thought to truly coordinate the ensemble down to the steed. However, needs must, as they say, and our polar opposites are not so kind as to be as consistently attired, though they do trend that way. At least they have relegated themselves to the more humble Binkys of native lore, rather than insinuating themselves among yours._

_Enclosed you shall find two vials from the same source, in hopes they shall be put to good use. Please leave my personal items to languish in peace: I do not hold so many people in esteem that I can afford to lose one, much less allow your Aslan to be replaced by the donkey in his retinue._

_Signed,_

_Yasunori_

Oooh. A code.

"Love letters now, Sa-kun?"

"Shut up, Kansa-nii."

-0-0-0

Heiji got back, bleary-eyed and nauseated, as the sun was setting after a long afternoon of playing decoy by hunting down worthless paper trails. It was a waiting game now; his part in the plan was finished, really, and that was exactly the problem.

Calm. He needed a cool head to keep Kudou alive. Find a quiet corner after dinner and meditate, get into the kendo headspace. Become the moment, let the strike snap out when it was right, all that junk he kept losing in the rush of the world.

(Well, more like he threw it out on its stuck-up zen ass. Ugh. Waiting sucked balls.)

He scrubbed a hand through his hair as he wandered upstairs, settling his hat back into place as he walked into Catch-the-Kidnapping-Bastards Central, aka the detective agency. It was a full house this evening, Megure's unit all packed around the small worktable with files spread wide.

Megure looked up. "Ah, Hattori-kun, come over here." He stepped aside and pointed at the blocked-up window behind him. "Tell us what you make of this."

Someone had found a whiteboard and propped it up on the windowsill, a lamp shining onto it to combat the backlighting effect and make it easily visible. In the top corner, they'd taped up a picture of Conan, a rare honest moment of surprise from finding a camera in his face. Smaller pictures of Kudou and Kuroba were taped up in the other corner. But what caught Heiji's attention was the timeline scrawled across the board underneath the photos.

_Thursday pm: Edogawa Conan kidnapped._

_Friday am: last verified sighting of Kuroba Kaito. (Ekoda High bombing.)_

_Saturday pm/Sunday am: video of boys resembling Kuroba-or-Kudou and Edogawa._

_Monday am: ransom call, possible demand of Kuroba-or-Kudou. (Fumiyo speculation.)_

_Thursday am: ransom call #2: kidnapper did not know of twin._

Heiji frowned at it for a long moment. There was something there, what was he seeing that would be obvious without being in on this whole mess...? (Kudou would spot it even if he was seeing double.) Wait. "... The guy didn't know about the twin."

Well, yeah, big duh Heiji, they established that this morning. But, "Conan was with one of the twins before the first ransom call. So either the guy had one of 'em before, or the twin had rescued the kid already." Kuroba had rescued Kudou already, the one bright spot in all this crap.

Except they didn't know that. So he wasn't supposed to be sure of that. And if you went the first route, and the kidnapper already had one twin...

... Why the hell would he demand the other twin if he didn't know there was one? But if you went with the second possibility, and Conan had been rescued... in a world without the Syndicate, the kind of world the cops thought there was, why wouldn't you give the kid _back_?

If you were a batshit world-class lunatic like Kid, a master of disguise (why wouldn't you disguise yourself and Conan with cameras around?), the man of a million voices... aw crap, what had that American profiler been yammering on about on the tv? Escalation, degeneration, going completely off the fucking deep end like you were trying to break Guiness, and who would be the first targets if that happened?

Kaboom. Bye-bye school. Bye-bye family... and oh gee, look who all's disappearing. Kaitou, Mama Kaitou, his favorite detective who just happens to be Cousin Kaitou... "Anybody seen Edogawa Fumiyo recently?"

Megure's moustache bristled. "Funny you should ask," he said flatly. "She's mysteriously disappeared."

"And she's the only source we got for it being dear old daddy at all." Fuck fuck fuck. This was why an author should never plan to snow the cops. Drama never went the same way in reality.

(Of course, there was always the possibility that Kid hadn't snapped, and had discovered something - like a group of the kind of people who'd blow up a school - that required him to take his entire family into protective custody. But that was way too close to the truth to suggest, not unless Heiji wanted to trigger a bout of unfortunate accidents.)

So. Picture homicidal psycho Kaitou, he who could be anybody, go anywhere, do anything, and seemed to have a larger plan known only to him and whatever trickster god he probably swore by.

Heiji felt the blood drain from his face.

-0-0-0

The bank manager had been dubious about the validity of Saguru's warrant, but a judicious combination of tricks (familial and professional references, the eliciting of sympathy for Saguru's injuries and relegation to light duties, and artless mentions of how it was all a 'long shot' and surely the manager didn't want to put up enough fuss that the public would realize whose bank a family of notorious thieves had used) netted Saguru the Kuroba family account statements in full.

It really was a long shot that the transactions would be anything but scrupulously clean. Except, of course, those the Syndicate may have added in the wake of the bombing and the twins' escape.

(May have, because such things as suspicious purchases of chemicals would depend upon whether the Syndicate had an agent in the correct bank or a skilled enough hacker, whether they intended to allow Kuroba to return to his original identity and its associated monies after they'd inducted him as an agent, and whether they thought it worth the effort to make him a terrorist suspect instead of a missing kid. Or missing Kid, as they'd evidently decided once the twins slipped their leash.)

With several final bows, Saguru accepted the briefcase brimming with papers, used his ever-present handcuffs to secure the handle to his uninjured arm (just in case), and clicked the locks into place.

The lobby was moderately busy, not quite in the lull between women cashing in before Saturday sales and students doing the same after the half-day of school. Saguru himself would've had to come later had Ekoda High already finished arrangements with cram- and high-schools around the rest of the city, but at this point it seemed likely that it would take another week to find places for all of Ekoda's students.

"Haku-san!"

Saguru could feel who it was even before the voice - or the long reddish hair - registered. "Koizumi-san."

The girl smirked sweetly at him, his thoughts fogging over. "How _fortuitious _to run into you here," she purred. "I was just thinking how _very worried_ I've been about certain people of our acquaintance. Why, I even brought Na... Ao-san out for a little retail therapy." She gestured towards the bank lines, long manicured fingers flicking at a figure barely recognizeable as Aoko. A very simple disguise, in the form of a high shaggy ponytail, cat-eyed glasses, and a midriff-baring loose tee over a tanktop, was probably enough to keep people from bothering her about Kid and her father. "But I've been wondering about you too, of course."

Saguru felt something warm flutter near his core. (Which made no sense, he wasn't interested in Koizumi-)

"I'm sure it's been terrible." She stepped up a little closer, warm and inviting. "You want to tell me about it? All the latest difficulties?" That was... quite the low-cut blouse, wasn't it. And she had some sort of perfume on, something warm with just a hint of rich labdanum... "I'd love to hear about it."

Of course. She knew Kuroba too, it had to be hard on her... and it wasn't as if Koizumi would tell anyone. Her closest friends were Aoko and Kuroba, and the latter had been a strange distant respect entirely unlike anything she had with anyone els-

Saguru dragged his eyes away with some effort, closed them, and took a centering breath. "Koizumi-san. Whatever it is you're doing to my faculties and good sense, please stop it." Good lord, he'd almost thought it was a good idea to discuss an open case with a civilian. "Now."

Koizumi drew herself back slightly, and gave an arch little look of 'I don't know what you're talking about'. But the effect did abate to reasonable... that is, classroom-normal... levels. "You're no fun, _Susan_."

Saguru went ice cold. "Ki-" No. Even Kid couldn't recreate Koizumi's strange effect. But that didn't preclude him enlisting her as an agent. (Again. Clearly this answered a long-held question regarding a particular case with a flying broomstick and a perfect alibi... except for the flying part.) "Well," he said, just loudly enough that an eavesdropper wouldn't realize it was on purpose, "thank you for the invitation. I would be honored to accompany you and-" Nakamori's name would draw attention. "- Ao-san, if there's time to stop by work and drop off my case."

"Not a problem at all," Akako assured him.

"Then," Saguru let his volume drop naturally once more, "if I may suggest, we perhaps should not discuss recent events. Even as worried as you've been. It would hardly help Ao-san's composure to know the latest theories." _I think I will be MOST eager to see you home today, though. And then-_

"EVERYBODY DOWN!"

Saguru had just enough time, in the moment after most of the crowd flung themselves to the floor, to identify Kaitou Kid (_not Kid_) brandishing a gun and a large empty sack (_clearly an idiot bank robber_) before the first crutch pegged the guy in the head. A bloodcurdling teakettle shriek followed, and then...

Well. The robber didn't have a chance.

Aoko looked like some sort of avenging Valkyrie fresh out of traction as she spun on her unbroken leg, wielding her second crutch with a decade of consummate skill. Kneecaps, back, bounce the head off the floor, and hit both hands with a decidedly sickening double-crunch.

Saguru stared. He hadn't ever quite realized how... well, he'd certainly noted Aoko's skill, and the unmistakable resemblence between staff weaponry and her mop, but he'd never thought she'd be so willing to inflict decisive injuries like this.

"Goodness," Koizumi breathed next to him, one hand clutched near her collar as if clasping a pendant. "I _must_ take Nakamori-san out more often."

... Saguru couldn't construe anything encouraging from that.

TBC


	10. Chapter 10

Warnings, disclaimers, etc.

Short chapter because some planned stuff was dragging so I skipped it. Also, I thought it was going to be longer, and then I got stuck for months. Sorry about the delay in posting this.

One number has been changed to match timelines.

* * *

Ch. 10

It was as if that first impersonator opened the floodgates. Suddenly, Kid was _everywhere_. From Nagasaki to Hokkaido, bank robberies and store thefts and break-ins, in singles and pairs and trios: there was even one report of a half-dozen Kids swiping road signs near Ritsumeikan's Kinugasa campus.

"_Tonight's Kid notices are targeting Hakata Ningyo Museum... the Center for Contemporary Art Kitakyushu... Gataket... Hayashibara Museum of Art... and the Sendai Mediatheque."_

Conan clicked the radio off, scrubbed his hands through his hair, and growled deep in his throat. It didn't - make - sense! WHY would broadcasting Kid's identity draw imposters out like flies? Was it offense at the master thief being a sort-of imposter himself? Or because he was underage? Had the unmasking been like declaring open season in the criminal underworld, waving red flags before proverbial bulls? Were his fans Just That Devoted they'd pull crazy stunts to honor his image? _What was it?!_

A hand clapped softly down on Conan's head, deft fingers unlacing Conan's from his hair and petting the locks smooth again. "Frustrated?" Kaito asked.

"Yeah," Conan admitted. "Any idea why you've got so many imposters?"

Kaito's hand fell away. "Actually... I might." He gestured for Conan to follow him, and they crossed the hall to the front parlor.

Conan had noticed the battered old secretary desk looming in one corner of the room, flanked by drooping velvet curtains and a spindly chair, but he hadn't realized it held a desktop computer inside. Someone had gutted the upper bookcase shelves to fit a flatscreen monitor, with speakers and keyboard and mouse tucked away under the slanted, fold-out worktop; the same had been done to the drawer shelves below, with their front pieces now glued to a hidden door panel.

Kaito booted up the computer, stuck in a flash drive, and settled into the creaking chair, then set about opening programs and internet browsers in a dizzying array of windows. After a couple of minutes, all but three of the windows collapsed.

"Main fan forum," Kid said simply, mouse pausing on one window. "IRC channel that you don't get to know more about. Bot logs." His usual smile soured ever-so-slightly. "I'd give you a few hours to look them over, but the sooner you know what you're looking at, the sooner I can go get some sleep."

Lovely. Just what they needed, an antsy, cooped-up, sleep-deprived... Conan knew Kaito had been watching the news and working on new identities, so with this computer work how long _had_ it been since the thief slept? "You need to learn to delegate," Conan told him.

"Working on it. Anyway. Logs." More clicking, windows enlarging, small clips of text highlighted. "It's all very subtle, but someone's been goading the imposter craze."

"What?!"

"I'm pretty sure it's only a couple of people with a lot of sockpuppets," Kaito's smile faded, "but that's more a matter of logistics than similarity of characterization. Two dozen people manipulating everyone else to go support Kid or commit crimes against his name? Makes no more sense than everyone rising up to do it themselves. One or two very good writers, on the other hand..."

_Like Tousan._ Conan swallowed hard. "But what would be the point?"

"Ah, I've made a deduction before the great Tantei-kun. Of course, I've had a few more hours to think about it, and a lot more experience with wanting a smokescreen."

"... Smokescreen."

"Quite." Kid swiveled in the chair, for all that it completely lacked wheels or a swivel seat, and slung an arm over Conan's shoulder. "Imagine, if you will, that you're one of Them. Your orders? Get Kaitou Kid and that runaway brat, without being noticed. Of course, the best way to lure out Kaitou Kid is to issue challenges, but he's not stupid enough to come rushing in for an invitation _now_. Next best way is to insult him with impersonators. He's never passed up kicking an impersonator to the cops, after all.

"Counter that. What happens when your impersonator is one of twenty? Ten of twenty? You could technically get enough agents out there to shoot them all, but that's _noticeable._ How do you pick the real Kid out of all the fakes?

"Now imagine you're a cop. Same thing, less kidnapping and/or assassination."

"... Someone's playing both sides," Conan said slowly.

Kaito nodded.

-0-0-0

High on the rooftops of Yokohama, Vermouth sneezed.

"Are you all right, nii-san?"

Vermouth beamed at the 'hastily disguised Shin'ichi' next to her, all concerned brown eyes and a stubbly beard, Yukiko's long curls hidden under a battered fishing hat. "Just fine, aniki." Someone was probably talking about her... hah, if that superstition was true, she'd catch colds more often. "Shall we?"

"After you." Vermouth raised one impish brow, and 'Shin'ichi' sighed. "All right, all right," he muttered, tugging the fishing hat nervously lower over his eyes. "You're faster. You're always faster..." he muttered, grumbling going inaudible as he climbed over the roof's low wall. The fire escape clanged once, then he vanished, with only the rhythmic metallic rattling of his footsteps fading away.

Vermouth headed to the other edge of the roof. The building next door was a little lower, faced in rough concrete stucco, and exactly the minimum distance away to meet fire code. A bit of talcum powder, a pair of rock-climbing gloves, good treads on her boots: the paired walls were practically a ladder. She laughed brightly as she leapt into the crevice, limbs snapping out in an X to catch herself just four meters down.

Someday she'd dislocate something doing that, and then- splat! But someday wasn't going to be today.

Adrenaline leant that perfect manic edge to sweet little Kaito's grin as Vermouth spiderwalked her way down, and she knew that if she looked into a mirror right now she'd have that unmistakable impish sparkle to her brown-over-blue eyes.

Hop off onto the pavement. Switch the rockclimbers for a pair of knit fingerless gloves, careful not to dislodge the thin latex glued to her fingertips, and stash them away in the pockets of her shapeless thrift-store jacket. Tug her baseball cap lower over her eyes, step out of the alley, and check both ways for cars.

The small restaurant across the way was a newer kind of place, with a windowed wall and a wooden door instead of noren curtains across the front, and therefore had a thin pall of cigarette and grilling smoke dimming the room. 'Kaito' slid quietly into a booth near the fire exit, twisting casually to get 'his' back to the wall and a good view of the entrance.

A few minutes later, 'Shin'ichi' slunk in like he had three cameras and a director yelling 'noir, _noir _dammit, not Bond!' at his back. Crossing the room, he gave a sour look at Kaito and the open seat alike, then slid in with a slight huff.

"Relax," Kaito told him. Shin'ichi visibly forced the tension from his shoulders, then ducked his head and pressed the top of the hat down again when the waitress stopped at their table. "Lemonade, please. Two. Seriously, aniki, you're working too hard. Let it go."

Shin'ichi peeked back up, eyes flicking towards the retreating waitress, before leaning just a little bit closer. "Suspicious is as suspicious does," he said, words though not tone breaking character. "Sometimes the force is a little too blind to subtleties."

Kaito rolled his eyes, but leaned in as well, careful to flinch back from the table's direct lamplight. "And how lucky for certain little bullets that it is, yes? He's not learned all that much from you."

"He's learned enough," Shin'ichi replied tightly. "And now he's... I don't know what to do-" His mouth snapped shut as the waitress returned, set out drinks. "Uh, thank you."

"We'll need a few minutes," Kaito added. "Haven't decided what we want yet."

"Take your time," the waitress said, her smile not reaching her eyes.

"Yes, thank you." And he turned back to Shin'ichi, leaning back and taking up his glass. The light flashed full into his eyes as he knocked back a third of the glass. Then he winced - ow, brain freeze - scrunching up the right side of his face.

(He could practically feel the pieces slotting one-by-one into place, in the sharpening weight of eyes upon him.)

Shin'ichi curled his hands around the glistening glass, despair draining back into a more typical piercing expression. "I hope to god you have a plan."

Kaito smirked. "Don't I always, Mei- aniki?" Movement out of the corner of his eye, a man with a buzz cut over near the bar. "Drink up, you don't want it to go to waste."

"For the record, I don't even like lemonade," Shin'ichi muttered, but he drank deeply anyway.

"Hey! You over there!" the man who'd been by the bar shouted, already halfway across the restaurant and closing fast. "Police!"

Kaito eeled out of the booth, catching Shin'ichi's wrist on the way out. "Time to go."

"Stop! Police! _Where's Edogawa Conan?!_"

Kaito banged through the fire exit, setting off the alarm and sprinkler system to a chorus of shrieks, Shin'ichi's weight pressing hard against his shoulder in a panicky hurry. Down the alley, around the corner, disguises ripped off and tossed into a handy dumpster, and Vermouth parted ways with a demure young schoolgirl on the next busy street.

-0-0-0

_My Kaguya,_

_Sleeting snow has been falling thickly here for many days. We keep digging ourselves out, but every hour seems to bring more, piling ever higher. The world seems covered in feather cloaks that shimmer like the moon; I wish you could share my little brazier and see them glow._

_I am sorry to have missed seeing you at the last market. I do not know if you were there, but I met up with several friends and we all got our fortunes read. Even my young cousin received one, though she doesn't believe in such things. Perhaps it's more peaceful for her not to - her fortune was not the best - but it's sad to see how jaded children can be these days._

_Should you wish to visit, I am certain you remember the first address I gave to you. We would love to see you again._

_Ever Yours, _

_Photogen_

Saguru finished wrapping the small note around Watson's leg, tucking the end safely away under her leg band and taping it in place. Then he leaned out the window and, with a sharp toss, set her flying free from his arm.

He watched her soar away, until she banked north behind a line of buildings and vanished from sight.

-0-0-0

The station was a lot quieter with Nakamori on suspension. Saguru set his school satchel on his small desk, shoehorned into a spare corner next to the water cooler, then sat down and checked his inbox. The fake notices were tapering off: only three printouts sat in the tray, analyses stapled to their backs in thin packets.

"Got a good one today," Hosoda said cheerfully as he stepped up to the cooler. One knuckle tapped the middle printout where its corner protruded from the stack. "That one was even delivered by dove, can you believe it? Shame it's a crap job," he added more soberly.

"That almost sounds like you miss him."

"Not with all _this _going on, I don't," Hosoda said sharply, sticking his cup under the spigot. The cooler glugged as Saguru teased out the middle sheaf to look at first. Proper format, horizontal writing, handwriting done in pen and not brush, the caricature wasn't obviously incorrect... ah, here was the evidence of the 'crap job'. One of the kanji, "tear", was blotchy, as if the forger's pen had been running out of ink and he hadn't bothered to make a fresh copy.

Then Saguru read the words themselves.

_And yet there was but one woman,_

_With her terrible silent secret._

_How many times did she appear?_

_Under the cup and shuffle the shells:_

_Where is her lost and lonesome tear?_

_It leaves her hands when she bows._

Huh. Hosoda was right, it was a shame the forger had... what, run out of patience? Run out of time? It was otherwise spot-on, the dove delivery and the impenetrable riddle and the letter format... perhaps the forger had left the mistake on purpose, actually, in some deluded attempt to show respect or some such nonsense. The word was too obviously ruined to have gone unnoticed.

... Wait.

Instinct had Saguru peering more closely at the damaged kanji. It was odd, the darker strokes looked a lot like kana if you took them separately. N - ko - na.

No. Ko - na - n. Conan.

_It's authentic._

_It's happening NOW._

"CHAKI-KEIBU!"

The bullpen came to a screeching halt, officers staring as Saguru bolted up from his desk, knocking Hosoda out of the way. He stormed into the office at the back of the room, Chaki's glower barely registering, and slapped the printout down on the desk. "It's authentic."

"Hakuba-kun..."

One harsh tap at the blotted kanji. "_Look_. Read the radicals clockwise." A split-second later, Chaki sucked in a harsh breath, and Saguru went on, "We've lost the entire day thinking it's a mistake, but he has to have been counting on that, or at least on us not getting very far until after school let out." He'd half-forgotten the energy of a Kid heist. It thrummed through him, tight in his throat and sharp in his fingertips. He jabbed at the note again. "Here, look, I know the first line; it's a Sherlock Holmes quote. We're looking for something to do with an _Airin_, or an _Adura_."

Chaki beckoned officers in behind Saguru. "Go on," he said tightly.

"Irene Adler, the only woman Holmes ever gave credit to, most interpret loved. She had several secrets, none of which were particularly terrible nor kept silent so to speak, but the third line I can also answer. She appeared once, and was mentioned four more times." The pieces lined up in Saguru's mind, click-click-click. "Adura-cho. Adura 1-4. It's not enough, he must think we'll be able to pick the right building on the block... perhaps it's a small block..."

Or perhaps - as he pulled up GoogleMaps on his phone and Chaki started snapping out orders to _drop everything, briefing in ten, call SWAT and the bomb squad and get a hostage negotiator, helicopters on standby, kevlar is NOT optional tonight_ - perhaps the block was both tiny and sparsely-built. Adura 1-4 was a speck of an island in the river cutting through Adura-cho, with perhaps half a dozen buildings all told: a strip of offices, a factory fringed with cheap food stands, train tracks and a station.

"The factory and station's too busy, too many people," Saguru muttered mostly to himself (partly for the cover, for any passing officer to overhear), zooming in as close as Google would let him and scrolling around the area on the tiny screen. "It's Kid, he could disappear for hours in an empty closet, but not for a month and not with a child. Probably moved to the block just for this notice, but that still presents the problem of keeping Edogawa-kun secret and under control. Edogawa-kun's not the type to be cowed by threats..."

And then, of course, there was the rest of the note. What was the terrible, silent secret? (Other than the Syndicate and Edogawa's true identity, neither of which Saguru or the police would or should know of.) What were the shells? What was to happen when 'she' bowed - what was the bow?

Saguru's internal timer clicked to eight minutes and counting. He put his phone away and joined the first trickle of officers towards the presentation room.

Under Nakamori, the room would've been noisy, anticipatory pandemonium already. Now, though, tension hunched officers' shoulders and hardened their eyes, paper maps unfolding with sharp rustles. New faces studded the familiar team: a soft-featured woman from hostage negotiation, a small cluster of jovial men whose grins and hands were as steady as Kid's, three with the slightly hypertrophic shoulders and overcompensated movements of men who wore armor more than uniforms. An intern scurried down the aisles, laying out fresh photocopies of the notice.

It wasn't long before Chaki-keibu entered the room, and the clustered officers took seats.

"Gentlemen," Chaki began. "Many of you have seen or heard of the Kaitou Kid notice delivered at 2:14 this afternoon by dove. After a second assessment, this note has been authenticated." A murmur circled around the room, quickly dying in the tension. "Furthermore, if you will examine the circled kanji, this notice is about Edogawa Conan."

Chaki grabbed a laser pointer and circled the island in the lower quadrant of the map. "This is Adura-cho 1-4." He quickly ran through Saguru's deduction, for those officers who hadn't heard it directly, and then began flashing the pointer at various points of egress. "We've ordered the bridges closed off, and units are on-scene redirecting traffic as of five minutes ago. Matsumoto-keibu is arranging with the train authority to close that station and block it off as well. Evacuation of the factory and surrounding businesses will begin in twenty minutes."

He settled both hands flat on the table, staring darkly out at the assembled officers. "I do not have to tell you that we do not know what to expect from Kid under normal circumstances. These circumstances are not normal. We may know Kuroba Kaito is just a kid himself, an overintelligent teenager in way over his head. _Never _forget that a cornered animal is the most dangerous kind."

"Questions?"

One of the SWAT men in the second row raised his hand. "Chaki-keibu." His eyes flicked to Saguru. "About Hakuba-kun."

"Hakuba-kun is not going."

Saguru stifled the immediate protest in his throat. _Who authenticated the note? Who found the lair? Who deduced Kid's true identity within a month of meeting the man for the first time?_

_Who knows all too well what the police are being led to discover?_

He raised a brow at the SWAT officer, meeting the man's eyes coolly until the other shifted and looked away. "I am well aware of the liability issues, sir," Saguru bit out. "I have no intention of setting foot on the island, given the volatility of the situation." Accompanying or following them to the river's shore, on the other hand... "I will retain a copy of the note and remain in contact by phone."

Hopefully he could deduce more of it quickly. They'd lost so many hours to mistaking it for a forgery already... Kid rarely announced himself more than twenty-four hours in advance, and had yet to hold a morning heist either. But how to obtain the crucial time from the riddle? There'd been two instances of time as a reference - "times" had determined the address, but "when" was still in play.

When could Adura-cho bow?

"Excuse me, Hakuba-kun?"

Saguru glanced up to find the hostage negotiator at his side. "Yes?"

"You are the foremost expert on Kid's profile." She offered a calculatedly demure smile, a flicker in her eyes as if she was already dissecting his psychological state from one word, and bowed slightly, her hands clasped before her. "I need to discuss him with y-"

"_Do that again_."

"- excuse me?"

He almost had it. "Bow. Please." Confused, she did so, and _that was it_. "'It leaves her hands when she bows'. Kid specified a woman, that's needed in English but unusual in Japanese, and women don't bow like men, the hands come together- he's set this for 6:30." Saguru pulled his pocketwatch out. 5:38. Given traffic patterns and the distance to Adura-cho, "Chaki-keibu, you have to leave _now_."

Files slapped shut, people calling out just on the verge of shouting, Chaki at the front of the room snapping out directions. (Saguru had a quick, half-mad moment of deja vu, a flash of school uniforms and satchels over the officers falling out into squads like schoolgirl cliques, and everyone's eyes glinting hypervigilantly for the next prank...)

The negotiator caught at his sleeve. "You're coming with me."

"Er, thank you...?"

"Kurokawa Nanami." She all but dragged him from the room, at the head of the pack of officers. "So. Tell me of Kuroba Kaito," she began briskly. "The profile doesn't match up with his earliest appearances or recent events. I mean, the boy goes from baseballs to bombs in two years flat, his escalation's erratic to the point of random, his profile may as well claim nonviolence as his religion..."

"It's clearly out of date," Saguru sighed. "The kidnapping, I could almost believe. Kid's always had a notable attachment to Edogawa-kun." Kurokawa's slim fingers tightened on his sleeve. "He very likely identifies strongly with the boy, considering the physical resemblence, staggering genius, and the fact that he is virtually orphaned and keeps uncovering murders at his age."

Kurokawa's grip didn't relax. "Kaito connects that to Kuroba Toichi's death onstage when he was eight?"

"It is the defining event in his psyche." That much, at least, he could be certain of. The elevator dinged, and they stepped inside, leaving the Task Force to their stampede down the stairs. "I'm afraid, Kurokawa-san, that I cannot explain the bombing." Except, of course, as another's work. "It does not make sense... it fits nothing I've ever observed of Kuroba Kaito."

"The bombing is not my job, Hakuba-kun," Kurokawa said kindly, before her voice hardened. "What I need to know is what Kaito thinks he's doing with Conan-kun. Before this notice, I would have said that Kid had taken Conan-kun to train as a partner." There was an ugly undertone to the word. "But now? Hopefully, he has demands. Hopefully, they're listed in that note. _Hopefully_, this is not some sort of challenge to him, some idea that he needs to formally escape the police with his target in order to possess him fair and square."

Saguru swallowed, as the elevator doors opened up beside him. "I must admit, I had not considered it in that light." _He always returns what he steals - he always returns it undamaged - except the bloody baseball, that was never found... but she knows all this. There's no point in saying it._

They piled into the back of Hosoda's car, Hosoda taking the wheel while Doi stuck the temporary siren to the roof. "I'll drop you off before the bridge," Hosoda said quietly, pulling into the back of the police caravan and hitting the gas.

The sirens were almost too loud to talk over, especially with the police radio crackling directions under Hosoda's dashboard. Paper slid through Saguru's fingers: the notice, which he'd forgotten to put away, clutched in Kurokawa's manicured hands.

She leaned in close, holding the note up between them. "Not to pressure you, but I need to know his demands."

"Of course." Saguru took the note back. Start fresh. _And yet there was but one woman_, Irene Adler, _with her terrible silent secret_... her earlier relationship with the King of Bohemia, not terrible by today's standards (though it would have damaged the royal marriage and line of succession in the story), nor silent in terms of the reader knowing as opposed to the fictional public; proof in the photograph, kept as protection for her and her new husband should the king threaten them... but how would that relate? Edogawa Fumiyo, of dubious identity and lost husband, a child who was certainly no child of...

Except that Conan was the offspring of a member of the Syndicate. But that couldn't be it, Kid was not mad enough to risk his brother's life revealing that information.

Backtrack. Take the line at face value. A woman with a secret. The missing Edogawa Fumiyo, whose true identity had yet to be found, the child who was proclaimed a target. Vermouth, whose catchphrase had cropped up in conversation with the Kudous twice before... but again, revealing Vermouth would be too much of a risk. Using her catchphrase to lure a Syndicate witness, however...

A woman's secret in Adura-cho 1-4. The line about cups and shells. _Where is her lost and lonesome Conan?_ 'Mai to sabishii' didn't break down into other meanings that he could think of. Perhaps the adjectives were for aesthetics, or perhaps they were a comment on Conan's mental state. _It leaves her hands when she bows._ Conan leaves Adura-cho at 6:30 pm, is unobtainable after that point.

_Under the cup and shuffle the shells_ was clear enough. Division One had already run up against the question after coordinating the convenience store video of Kid and Conan with the ransom statement that the kidnapper had Conan and did not know of the twin. Who had Conan? Where was Conan?

Saguru frowned. "Which shell is he under?" he muttered. Which shell, which shell, but the trick to a shell game was... "The pebble's never under any of them."

"Hakuba-kun?"

Saguru waved Kurokawa silent, writing blurring as he stared through the paper without really seeing it. "Either Kid has Conan, or his biological father does. Possibilities in a shell game, but the trick's that neither of them is right, neither Kid nor this biological father have had Edogawa-kun at all."

"Hakuba-kun, please. We saw him on that tape-"

"A first attempt. This isn't a heist, it's a rescue."

Kurokawa sputtered. "Saguru-kun, don't you think you're a bit emotionally overinvested-" Doi leaned back and passed the radio handset to Saguru. "This ISN'T RIGHT!"

"Respectfully, ma'am, I think we know Kid better than you," Doi said. "This is the first thing that's made sense this whole month."

"Amen." Saguru double-checked that the unit was set to the right channel, then thumbed the button on. "Consultant for 1-Kilo-Tango-1 and all associated units, 10-43."

"_Roger, 10-43_."

"Responsible is unknown party. Original suspect is attempting rescue, over."

Static crackled. "... _Responsible unknown, original attempting rescue, roger, out_."

The car went quiet for a moment. Then, Doi took the handset back and sighed in slight relief. "Nice to know Kid hasn't done some triple-reverse-twist-armstand dive off the deep end."

Yes. Yes, it was. Except, "Doi-keiji." Saguru pinched the bridge of his nose. There'd be a raging headache starting there soon, reaching with burning fingers to each temple and squeezing behind his eyes by the end of the night. He knew the signs. "We are now up to the task of facing an individual of unknown proclivities towards violence, who has not only eluded Kaitou Kid for twenty-nine days and counting, but has tracked him down and stolen an item - namely Edogawa Conan - from his custody."

It was like all the air had been sucked out of the car.

"I do not like those prospects, do you?"

"... No sir."

There was really nothing to say to that. After another tense, infinite five minutes (and thirty-three point six seconds), the car finally slowed to a stop.

People stared as Saguru got out, his eyes pinned to the strip of offices in Adura 1-4, but quickly turned away when no one official exited with him. He could see the light glowing off several cell phone screens, video lenses and fingers pointed between heads in the crowd, faintly hear shouting under the wail of sirens and the rushing in his ears.

_Is this how it was supposed to happen?_

The railing of the bridge bit cold into his palms when he stumbled against it, jostling people out of the way.

_This can't be how it's supposed to end._

Across the river, flames licked at the darkening sky.

-0-0-0

TBC


End file.
